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BALANCE : The Fundamental Verity. Crown 

8vo. 
ETERNALISM: A Theory of Infinite Justice. 

Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.25 ne^. Postage, 13 

cents. 



BALANCE 

THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 



BALANCE 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 



BY 



ORLANDO J. SMITH 

AUTHOR OF "eTERNALISM" 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1904 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 


Two Gooies Received 


APR 30 1904 


OoDyrlffht Entry 


CLASS 0^ XXc. No. 


COPY B 






COPYRIGHT 1904 BY ORLANDO J. SMITH 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published September JQ04 



CONTENTS 
I 

The Power of the Sea curbs the Sea — Physi- 
cal Excess turns upon Itself, defeats Itself 
— Excess is defeated also in Chance, into 
which Physical Force does not enter — 
Deficiency balances Excess — Nature's Law 
of Balance i 

II 

Equilibrium, in the Sense of Actual Rest, is 
Unknown — Nature is a State of Ceaseless 
Motion, regulated by Balance 9 

III 
The Scientific Interpretations of Nature point 
to the Single Interpretation, that Balance 
rules the World — "To Every Action there 
is an Equal Reaction," is the Supreme 
Statement 15 

IV 

No Force works aimlessly or wanders away 
into Extinction — Balance is Supreme in 
[ V ] 



CONTENTS 



the Small, as well as in the Great, Processes 
of Nature — Every Physical Transformation 
includes Exact Equivalence and Compensa- 
tion 24 

V 

Man's Part in Nature — Progress by Antag- 
onism — Nature's Process is by Test and 
Trial, by unfolding, changing, ripping up, 
undoing and redoing — Error dies in the 
Struggle 31 

VI 

Action and Reaction in Human Affairs — 
From Paganism to Christianity, to Asceti- 
cism, to the Crusades, to Exploration and 
Commerce — Minor Interactions — Reaction 
from Words and Tones, Speeches and 
Thoughts 43 

VII 

The Law of Consequences — The Good or 
Evil in Things is discovered by Obser- 
vation of Consequences — Morals are de- 
termined by the Consequences of Human 
Actions 54 

[ vi ] 



CONTENTS 



VIII 
Equivalence is the Test of Truth — Our Stand- 
ards are Instruments of Equivalence — The 
Balancing of Alternatives — Reasoning is an 
Exploration of the Undetermined, a Search 
for Antecedents and Consequences 6i 

IX 

Compensation in Human Affairs — Problems 
of Business are Problems of Compensation — 

. Right is accomplished by rendering Equiva- 
lents — Duty is a Debt, literally a Due — 
The Golden Rule is a Law^ of Equivalent 
Exchange 72 

X 

Order is Regulation ; Balance is Regulator. 
Right is Correctness ; Balance is Corrector. 
Justice is Compensation ; Balance is Com- 
pensator — Balance is Single and Supreme, 
without a Mate or Equal 80 

XI 

Natural Justice — Compensation in Human 
Affairs involves a Cycle of Beginning, De- 
[ vii ] 



CONTENTS 



velopment and Conclusion, as Seed Time, 
Growth and Han-est — Tyranny is an Anti- 
dote for ]Mean Spiritedness, and Courage is 
the Antidote for Tyranny — Through such 
Rude x\lternations do we move forward 84 

XII 
Justice is Incomplete in the Present Existence 
— Our Life here is as a Broken Part of a 
Broader Life — If Death ends All, then the 
Mass of Mankind must live, toil, suffer and 
die under a Condition of Hopeless Injustice 92 

XIII 

The Essential Meaning of Religion is found in 
the Agi'eements, and not in the Disagree- 
ments, among Believers — There are Three 
Fundamental Religious Beliefs: (i) That 
the Soul is Accountable for its Actions ; 
(2) That the Soul survives the Death of the 
Body; (3) In a Supreme Power that rights 
Things 99 

XIV 

The Fundamental Meaning of Religion is 
revealed by its History' — Religion recog- 

[ ^" ] 



CONTENTS 



nizes that Right rules the World — Science 
recognizes that Balance rules the World — 
Religion and Science are in Harmony, not 
in Conflict 119 

XV 

Religion has been misinterpreted and per- 
verted — Science also has been misinter- 
preted and perverted — Religion answ^ers 
for its Perversions as Science, Truth and 
Right answer for their Perversions — The 
Value of a Truth is measured by the Magni- 
tude of its Perversions 124 

XVI 

Measuring the Value of Religion by its Denial 
— Only One School of Thought denies 
Religion — Materialism is the Doctrine that 
Wrong rules the World — Science and Re- 
ligion meet on Grounds of Life, not Death ; 
of Persistence, not Annihilation ; of Right, 
not Wrong ; on the Ground that the Laws 
of Nature are Uniform, not Contradictory 138 



[ i- ] 



BALANCE : 

THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 



I 



The Power of the Sea curbs the Sea — Physical Ex- 
cess turns upon Itself, defeats Itself — Excess is 
defeated also in Chance, into which Physical Force 
does not enter — Deficiency balances Excess — 
Nature's Law of Balance. 

LONG ISLAND extends into the 
Atlantic Ocean for more than one 
hundred miles to the east of the 
mainland. The ocean, impelled by the pre- 
vailing southwest winds, beats with great 
force upon the island, and would over- 
whelm it but for a series of sand-banks 
which lie next to the sea and resist the 
force of its waves. Inside of these dunes 

[ ' ] 



BALANCE 



is an almost continuous line of villages, the 
inhabitants of which live in no fear of the 
sea, though they know that one of its storms 
would inundate their low-lying lands if they 
were unprotected by the dunes. 

Against the dunes the ocean wages un- 
ceasing war, retiring a little for rest at low 
tide, renewing the conflict with the turn 
of the tide, and rising often, with the as- 
sistance of the wind, to a furious assault. 
Each day the ocean wastes more force in 
its attacks than was ever exerted upon a 
human battle-field, and each day it suffers 
defeat. 

These barriers against the sea were not 
built by human hands nor planned by hu- 
man thought, though no modern engineer 
could have designed a better protection 
for the land or built with less waste of ma- 
terial or with a closer calculation of the 
strain on the different parts of the line 
of defense. On the western shore of the 
island, where the force of the waves is 

[ - ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

weaker, owing to the proximity of the 
mainland, the barriers of sand lie low; to 
the eastward they rise higher to meet the 
increasing power of the sea. They cut 
straight across large bodies of the sea from 
one point of land to another, that they 
may present no weak angle to the enemy. 
The dunes are so constructed as to present 
upon their whole front that exact angle to 
the line of the prevailing winds that will 
make each assault of the sea a glancing 
blow. 

It is the power of the sea which forms 
these barriers against its own depreda- 
tions. The force of the waves lifts the sand 
from the bottom of the sea, depositing it 
upon the shore. Each wave carries a little 
sand; the stronger the wave the more sand 
does it carry; the severer the storm, the 
higher does it lift the sand upon the dunes, 
the more impregnably does the ocean 
fortify its shores against itself. Why the 
power of the ocean gives that exact trend 
[ 3 ] 



BALANCE 



to the dunes which makes them strongest, 
is explained by Darwin's theory of natural 
selection : only that form of dune fitted to 
resist the sea could survive. 

The explanation of the dunes is simple, 
the processes of their formation still con- 
tinuing and being open to examination. 
But the meaning of the dunes is less sim- 
ple. They testify to the fact that Nature 
curbs the excesses of the sea by a process 
quite reasonable, indeed unavoidable. The 
force of the sea is turned against the sea. 
This fact, and numerous other facts, sug- 
gest the theory that in some wa}' all excess 
is curbed, or will finally defeat itself; that 
Nature has no pendulum which swings in 
one direction only. 

In the case of the dunes we have an 
illustration of physical force restraining 
and defeating itself. Another example of 
Nature's antagonism to excess, into which 
physical force does not enter, is found in 
the laws of chance — what we call chance 
[ 4 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

or luck being quite as much under the 
control of law as other things. In a draw- 
ing of odd and even numbers, the chance 
that the odd number — using the odd for 
illustration, the chances of the even num- 
ber being the same — - will emerge in the 
first drawing is one in two; the chance 
that the odd will be drawn a second time 
is one in four; that it will be drawn a third 
time is one in eight; a fourth time one in 
sixteen, and so on. There is one chance in 
1,024 that the odd will be drawn consecu- 
tively ten times; one chance in 1,048,576 
that it will be drawn twenty times; one 
chance in a thousand millions that it will 
be drawn thirty times; one chance in a 
million millions that it will be drawn forty 
times. It is as if Nature should say: 

" Against the consecutive return of the 
odd number, I double the barriers with 
each drawing. It is not alone physical 
excess which produces opposition; it is 
excess in whatever form it appears which 

[ 5 ] 



BALANCE 



turns upon itself, defeats itself. And my 
law is no more against excess than against 
deficiency. The barriers against the con- 
secutive return of the odd number force 
the return of the delinquent even number. 
In the long run, the odd and even num- 
bers drawn shall be equalized repeatedly. 
" So far as you overdraw the odd, just 
so far you underdraw the even. If, in ten 
drawings, you have drawn the odd seven 
times, and the even three times, then the 
odd is in excess by two drawings, and 
the even is in deficiency by two drawings 
also. Strictly speaking, nothing is ever out 
of balance in my processes. That which 
is overdone in one direction is underdone 
equally in an opposite direction. Excess 
can exist only through a corresponding 
deficiency, and deficiency can exist only 
through a. corresponding excess. A defi- 
cienc}^ in crops is balanced by an excess 
in prices; an excess in crops is balanced 
by a deficiency in prices. Equivalence 
[ 6 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

is universal, all-present and all-powerful. 
This is my law of Balance." 

We live in a world in which, if science 
and philosophy do not err, there is cease- 
less motion everywhere, and perfect rest 
nowhere. There is motion in the heart of 
the granite mountain, in the minutest por- 
tions of the human body; motion great 
and insignificant, perceptible and imper- 
ceptible, disastrous and beneficent. Is this 
motion — which is as universal in human 
thought and action as in matter — under 
no restraint, no order, no law ? or is it un- 
der the control of some power or principle 
which curbs excess, restrains deficiency, 
restores balance, grants compensation ? 
Whether the return of equivalence and 
compensation is not fundamental in Na- 
ture, alike in physics and in the human 
soul — whether the rational foundation for 
man's hope for a future life, and for his 
belief in the rightness of the world-order, 
should not be sought for in the supremacy 
[ 7 ] 



BALANCE 



of equivalence and compensation — this is 
the subject of my inquiry, in \yhich I shall 
deal briefly with the relations of balance 
to physical science, and pass promptly to 
the larger question, the relation of com- 
pensation to human affairs. 



[ 8 ] 



II 

Equilibrium, in the Sense of Actual Rest, is Un- 
known — Nature is a State of Ceaseless Motion, 
regulated by Balance. 

WHY do I use the word balance 
instead of equilibrium? Is not 
equilibrium more accurate than 
balance? We observe much of stability, 
poise and equivalence in and about us, 
which we call equilibrium. But we have 
not observed -perfect equilibrium. The 
word perfect is often misused. Nor have 
the physicists, with their finest balances 
and instruments of precision, found per- 
fect equilibrium. They have invented 
scales which, placed in a vacuum, isolated 
as far as possible from external disturb- 
ance, weigh with remarkable fineness. 
But they have invented no scales and dis- 
covered no conditions which enable them 
to weigh with infinite fineness. The in- 
[ 9 ] 



BALANCE 



finite eludes us. If they should improve 
their balances so that they may weigh one 
of the motes which we see in a sunbeam, 
still they would not reach perfect equi- 
librium. They must weigh a millionth of 
the mote and a millionth of that millionth, 
and so on to infinity, the unreachable. 

The problem of perfect equilibrium faces 
infinite perturbations on all sides. There 
is no perfect vacuum for the scales. Our 
government at Washington preserves our 
standard measures in an even temperature. 
The evenness of temperature can be main- 
tained to one degree, perhaps to the hun- 
dredth of a degree or to the thousandth, 
but not to the millionth or to infinite fine- 
ness. 

Moreover, the maintenance of a perfect 
equilibrium would be in conflict with the 
scientific assumption that motion is cease- 
less. Perfect equilibrium maintained would 
be perfect rest, that which exists nowhere, 
according to the theory of the continuity 
[ »o ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

of motion and the persistence of force. 
Well it is with us and with the world that 
perfect rest does not exist! If the blood 
in my body should stand at perfect equi- 
librium for a moment, I would die. For 
motion is life; its cessation would be ex- 
tinction. 

Equilibrium may be compared with the 
present in time, which, strictly speaking, 
is that point in which the past and future 
meet — a point which is really impercep- 
tible, as the reader will realize if he will 
pause and try to hold or catch it. It is 
gone before we can grasp it; it is swifter 
than the thought which would compre- 
hend it. 

As the present is a fact in time, though 
elusive, so we may assume that two 
weights, nearly equal, swinging in a bal- 
ance, will pass and repass the point of 
equilibrium, even of perfect equilibrium, 
with each alternate movement of the arms 
of the balance. As the present is a point 

[ " ] 



BALANCE 



which we gain only to lose it, so equi- 
librium is a point or line which mo- 
tion crosses and recrosses without resting: 
upon it. 

When scientific men have occasion to 
speak of equilibrium with exactitude, they 
use the qualifying term •'approximate," 
meaning thereby relative or practical equi- 
librium, nearness to perfect equilibrium, a 
good state of balance. And this is what we 
find — a good state of balance — in Na- 
ture, notwithstanding her ceaseless motion 
and transformations, some transformations 
being slow, requiring millions of years, 
some as swift as the transformation of the 
future into the past, some open to our sight, 
some imperceptible, the greatest being 
sometimes the least perceptible to our 
senses, as is the motion of the earth in its 
ceaseless journey around the sun at the rate 
of eighteen miles a second, one thousand 
and eieht^' miles a minute — as if one 
should fly from New York to Yonkers in 
E '^ J 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

one second, to Albany in ten seconds, to 
Buffalo in thirty seconds, to Chicago in one 
minute, to San Francisco in three minutes 
— one thousand times faster than an ex- 
press train, fifty times the speed of a rifle- 
bullet. We are disturbed often by our own 
little projects, inventions and affairs, but 
we are not fearful that the bulky earth will 
come to harm in its mad course, nor would 
we know that it moves at such speed, or 
that it moves at all, if the astronomers had 
not demonstrated the fact. Nor does Her- 
schePs discovery that the solar system is 
moving at the rate of about twenty thou- 
sand miles an hour toward the constella- 
tion Lyra disturb us, nor do we worry over 
the apparently inevitable collision to follow 
this movement, for the astronomers assure 
us that that danger is remote, and that it 
will come, if it comes at all, long after this 
earth has ceased to be habitable. We are 
persuaded that the astronomers have dis- 
covered regularity and precision in the 
[ '3 ] 



BALANCE 



movements of the heavenly bodies, that 
their forecasts of these movements are 
trustworthy, and that Nature, in the large, 
in her greater and grander manifestations3 
is ruled by order. 



[ H ] 



Ill 

The Scientific Interpretations of Nature point to 
the Single Interpretation, that Balance rules the 
World — " To Every Action there is an Equal 
Reaction," is the Supreme Statement. 

MODERN science accepts with 
practical unanimity eight inter- 
pretations of the system of Na- 
ture, which are recognized usually as fun- 
damental : — 

I. To every action there is an equal 
and opposite reaction. 

" If fire doth heate water, the water re- 
actethagaine . . . upon the fire, and cooleth 
it/' says Sir K. Digby (a. d. 1644). The 
wagon pulls against the horse with the 
same strain that the horse pulls against the 
wagon. The knapsack exacts from the sol- 
dier who carries it an expenditure of force 
equal to its weight. Let me strike a stone 
wall with a gloved fist, and it will give 
[ ^5 ] 



BALANCE 



back a gloved blow in response. The wall 
will be gloved, even as my fist is gloved, 
at the point of contact. Let me strike hard 
with bare knuckles, and I shall be con- 
vinced that Nature gives even to senseless 
things some powers of resistance, of de- 
fense, even of resentment. If I should be 
thrown upon the stone wall by accident, 
still the wall will return the blow with 
equal force. Nature's ways are exact — 
strain for strain, blow for blow — with no 
allowance for intention. 

" To every action there is an equal and 
opposite reaction,'' is Newton's Third Law 
of Motion, which is accepted as the fun- 
damental axiom of physics. In this law 
Newton has expressed also, I believe, the 
fundamental law of Nature — that action 
and reaction are ceaseless, equivalent and 
compensatory. 

2. Tkat effects folloiv causes in un- 
broken succession. 

Strictly speaking, the axiom of causa- 
[ '6 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

tion is only another expression of the axiom 
" that reaction equals action.'' Effects are 
the consequences of causes, the reactions 
from causes, the equivalents of causes. 

3. Gravitation — tAat every two bodies 
or portions of matter in the universe 
attract each other with a force pro^or- 
tional directly to the quantity of matter 
they contain and inversely to the squares 
of their distances. 

Gravitation, if considered as a force of 
attraction only, is a force which balances 
its opposite, repulsion. The attraction of 
the sun balances the momentum which 
would otherwise project the earth on a 
straight line into space. This balance holds 
the earth steadily in its course around the 
sun. Opposite forces of attraction and re- 
pulsion, centripetence and centrifugence, 
exist in the world in its greatest and small- 
est parts, alike in constellations and in 
atoms. Science is compelled to recognize 
repulsion as being as universal as attrac- 
[ '7 ] 



BALANCE 



tion. To account for these contrary forces 
has so far baffled investigation, Newton's 
great discovery accounting only in part. 
Science knows only this — that these 
forces exist; that they meet, offset^ neu- 
tralize and regulate each other, sometimes 
mildly or imperceptibly, sometimes vio- 
lently and with fearful convulsions, and 
that in their influences, contacts, struggles 
and wars thev hold all thing^s in balance. 

4. Evolution — including its opposite, 
devolution or dissolution — that the fit 
advance a?id the icnfit decliiie, advance- 
ment depeiidiiig ttpon adaptability^ and 
decline up07i inadaptability^ to enviroii- 
ment. 

There are seeds that will grow in a sand- 
bank, others must have loam; some will 
grow only on mountain heights, others on 
low levels; some in low temperatures, 
others in high; some organisms can live 
only in the water, others die in the water; 
some are self protected against the ele- 

[ 18 ] " 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

ments, others must be housed and clothed 
— and so on through numberless varia- 
tions in requirements. Evolution is the 
balancing of organisms with their sur- 
rounding conditions, influences and forces. 
Those that are fit — that is, in harmony 
with their environment — will survive; 
those that are unfit will fail. As Herbert 
Spencer says : — 

" Evolution under all its aspects, general and spe- 
cial, is an advance towards equilibrium. We have 
seen that the theoretical limit towards which the 
integration and differentiation of every aggregate 
advances, is a state of balance between all the forces to 
which its parts are subject^ and the forces which its 
parts oppose to them'^ — Biology, ii. 537. 

5. That matter is indestructible. 

6. That force is persistent and inde-- 
structible. 

Mr. Spencer has said (First Principles, 

p. 182) that " the verification of the truth 

that matter is indestructible '' rests only 

upon " a tacit assumption of it." " A tacit 

[ 19 ] 



BALANCE 



assumption/' with no rational basis for the 
assumption, would be no verification; it 
would be a guess. The truth that matter 
and force are indestructible rests upon a 
better ground than an assumption; it is 
the inevitable corollary of the truth, " To 
every action there is an equal and contrary 
reaction.'' If there could be a single case 
in which matter and force are annihilated, 
then Newton's axiom would be untrue, 
for, in that case, reaction would fail to fol- 
low action. The turning of something into 
nothing, by the destruction of matter or 
force, would break the succession of cause 
and effect, of action and reaction ; and con- 
sequently the theories of the indestructi- 
bility of matter and of force have their 
roots in Newton's axiom, in the great law 
of consequences, of equivalence, of com- 
pensation, of balance. 

7. That motion is ceaseless^ and con- 
sequently that transformation is contin- 
uous. 

[ 20 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

Here we have confirmation of the con- 
clusion that the theories of the indestruc- 
tibility of matter and of force rest upon 
Newton's axiom. If motion should cease, 
then there could be no reaction for "every 
action.'' The modern theories of the per- 
sistence of matter and force, and of the 
ceaselessness of motion, are extensions, in- 
terpretations and necessary consequences 
of the fundamental truth that " every ac- 
tion " is followed by a reaction. 

8. Tke laws and ways of Nature are 
uniform and harmonious. 

Uniform means of one form, agreement, 
consistency. Harmony means concord, the 
just adaptation of parts to each other, 
agreement also, unison. We observe this 
uniformit}^, harmony and agreement to a 
marked degree in the fundamental expla- 
nations of Nature which we are now con- 
sidering. They teach us that there is nei- 
ther halt nor break in Nature's processes; 
that motion is ceaseless, transformation con- 
[ ^' ] 



BALANCE 



tinuouSj force persistent, matter indestruc- 
tible; that in these ceaseless transforma- 
tions repulsion balances attraction, effects 
balance causes — in short, that reaction 
equals action, that balance attends and 
controls transformation. 

We cannot assume uniformity and har- 
mony without also assuming a ground of 
uniformity and harmony. What is Nature's 
one form, or rule, or way, or law, or prin- 
ciple, upon which her uniformities and 
harmonies rest? Of the fundamental ex- 
planations of science, one — Newton's law 
of ceaseless equivalence and compensa- 
tion, " To every action there is an equal 
and opposite reaction '' — is the imperious 
and supreme statement, the others being 
subsidiary or complementary to it, or ex- 
planatory of it. 

The fundamental conceptions of science 
point distinctly and with emphasis to a 
higher and single generalization — that 
Balance rules the 'world. Balance is the 

[ " ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

key that unlocks them, the word that ex- 
plains them, the principle that harmonizes 
them. 

A man out of balance falls; a globe out 
of balance would be destroyed. If the uni- 
verse were out of balance, it would pre- 
sent a spectacle of anarchy and chaos. 
As the Brooklyn bridge could not support 
itself without cables and piers, so no or- 
ganism could exist without balance. Bal- 
ance is of necessity the regulating and 
saving force in Nature, since a force supe- 
rior and antagonistic to balance — if such 
could exist — would be a destroyer. The 
supremacy of balance is that which is, 
must be, and could not be otherwise; that 
without which no order could exist. 



[ ^3 ] 



IV 

No Force works aimlessly or wanders away into 
Extinction — Balance is Supreme in the Small, as 
well as in the Great, Processes of Nature — Every 
Physical Transformation includes Exact Equiva- 
lence and Compensation. 

"T X TITHOUT the axiom that ac- 
\/ V/ tion and reaction are equal and 
opposite, astronomy could not 
make its exact predictions/' says Spencer 
(First Principles J p. 193). As astronomy 
discerns the operation of the laws of bal- 
ance in the remotest regions accessible to 
human vision, and in the most tremendous 
phenomena, so chemistry discovers the 
same accurate adjustments among the 
smallest particles of matter of which we 
have any knowledge. 

Lavoisier is called the founder of mod- 
ern chemistry. That which distinguishes 
his work from the work of his predeces- 

[ M ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

sors is the more accurate measurement of 
the materials and forces which are involved 
in chemical changes, and a more orderly 
view of these phenomena as perfectly bal- 
anced interactions. His work destroyed 
the theory of " phlogiston/' which was in- 
consistent with natural balance because it 
introduced a mystic agent — " phlogiston, 
the spirit of fire '' — having unnatural prop- 
erties contradictory of the law of action 
and reaction. 

The problem of oxidation puzzled chem- 
ists in Lavoisier's day. The rapid action 
of fire and the slow rusting of a metal 
were seen to be closely akin, but the cause 
was elusive. It was necessary to learn that 
the essential of both processes is oxygen, 
coming from the air or some other source; 
and that there is no actual loss or gain in 
the process of oxidation. This truth led 
to the broader knowledge that, in every 
chemical transformation, whatever disap- 
pears in one form, reappears in another; 
[ ^5 ] 



BALANCE 



that every manifestation of force is due 
to a disturbance of balance among the 
minute, invisible particles which we call 
atoms; that no force works aimlessly or 
wanders away into extinction. 

The most recent discoveries in thermo- 
chemistry, in electro-chemistry, in the 
phenomena of solution, and in the realm 
of molecular structure, depend upon the 
same principle: that any apparent super- 
abundance or deficiency indicates error, 
and that the truth will always reveal a per- 
fect correspondence, equivalence, and rec- 
titude of law. 

The history of chemical experimentation 
is full of the most perfect illustrations of 
the principle of equivalence, which finds 
its simplest expression in the universal 
practice of chemists in writing down every 
chemical reaction as an equation: So much 
of this plus so much of that equals the 
result. 

We shall search in vain for any demon- 
[ 26 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

strated truth concerning the system of Na- 
ture, for any law, rule or axiom of physics, 
which does not rest fundamentally upon 
the equivalence of action and reaction, of 
cause and effect. " The straight line joining 
the sun and planet must pass over equal 
areas in equal times/' is Kepler's law. ^^ At 
any point in a fluid at rest the pressure is 
equal in all directions/' is Pascal's prin- 
ciple. ^^A body immersed in a fluid is 
buoyed up by a force equal to the weight 
of the fluid displaced," is the principle of 
Archimedes. " The angles of incidence 
and reflection are in the same plane, and 
are equal," is the law of reflection. " The 
reciprocal of the principal focal length is 
equal to the sum of the reciprocals of any 
two conjugate focal lengths," is the law of 
converging lenses. " The current is equal 
to the electro-motive force divided by the 
resistance," is Ohm's law. " The disap- 
pearance of a definite amount of mechanical 
energy is accompanied by the production 
[ 27 ] 



BALANCE 



of an equivalent amount of heat/' is Joule's 
principle. Observe how perfectly these 
and the other principles and laws of phys- 
ics agree with Newton's law of motion : 
" To every action there is an equal 2Sidi op- 
posite reaction." 

The universality of equivalence is 
broadly expressed in the law of the con- 
servation of energy: "When one form of 
energy disappears, its exact equivalent 
in another form always takes its placeP 
This law, accepted by modern science, 
leaves no ground for the assumption that 
there can be a failure of equiv^alence in 
motion or transformation. 

Can we say that the equivalents which 
return persistently in motion and transfor- 
mation are compensatory ? Yes; the re- 
turn of an exact equivalent is exact com- 
pensation. Heat is the compensation for 
the fuel that produces it; electricity is the 
compensation for the energy that is trans- 
formed into it; one molecule of water is 
[ ^8 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

the compensation for two atoms of hydro- 
gen and one atom of oxygen. A definite 
amount of matter or force pays for exactly 
the same amount in another form. That 
which disappears and that which succeeds 
are mutually compensatory. Fuel pays for 
heat, and heat pays for fuel. The account 
balances perfectly. Nature has no profit 
and loss account, no bad debts, no failures 
in compensation. 

The assumption that anything can exist 
in the physical world without exact com- 
pensation appeals to the scorn alike of 
science and of common sense. Our patent 
office in Washington refuses to consider 
devices to produce perpetual motion, not 
because that office would place an arbi- 
trary limit on the possibilities of mechan- 
ical invention, but because effect without 
cause, power without compensation, is im- 
possible. 

We shall be justified in the conclusion 
that the principle of balance presides over 
[ ^9 ] 



BALANCE 



the processes of Nature in the small as 
well as in the large — alike in atoms, sat- 
ellites and suns — and that every trans- 
formation of matter and force, great or 
insignificant, includes the return of exact 
equivalents and compensation. 



I 



[ 30 ] 



V 



Man's Part in Nature — Progress by Antagonism — 
Nature's Process is by Test and Trial, by unfold- 
ing, changing, ripping up, undoing and redoing — 
Error dies in the Struggle. 



A 



PART from the world of physics, 
and yet inextricably entangled 
with the physical, is a realm in 
which exist thought, hope, imagination, 
reason, comedy, pathos, tragedy, friend- 
ship and love, revenge and hate, honor 
and humiliation, right and wrong, pleasure 
and laughter, pain, agony and despair; a 
world which is included in Nature, the 
same as mineral and vegetable, matter and 
motion, atom and sun. The thought, hopes, 
ideals and fate of man belong as much to 
Nature as wood, muck, coal or stone. 

The conscious part of man — that 
which sees, feels and comprehends — is 
of higher interest and importance than 

[ 31 ] 



BALANCE 



anything purely physical. Newton com- 
prehended gravitation, but gravitation 
could not comprehend Newton. Priestley 
discovered oxygen, but oxygen never dis- 
covered Priestley. The astronomers have 
seen far-off stars, but no star will ever 
see an astronomer. Our great laws and 
principles, our immensities, our planets 
and suns — they are senseless, they know 
nothing, see nothing, feel nothing. But 
man, frail, weak and defective though he 
be, can see, feel and comprehend. 

So far as man is physical, we know 
that he is subject to the same laws that 
control other manifestations of matter and 
force. But what of the conscious part 
of man? Is it subject to the same laws 
of action and reaction, cause and effect, 
equivalence and compensation, that rule 
in the physical world? Is there one law 
for physical interaction, and a different 
law, or no law, for intellectual and moral 
interactions? Does compensation exist for 
[ 32 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

matter and force only, or does it exist also 
for the human soul? 

The polarities of Nature, and the inter- 
actions between them, are quite as pro- 
nounced in human life as in physics; in- 
deed, the polarities extend beyond the 
physical and human into the abstract, as 
in odd and even numbers. The polarities 
are sometimes antagonistic, sometimes re- 
ciprocal, and always, I believe, mutually 
corrective. 

" An inevitable dualism bisects Nature," 
says Emerson, " so that each thing is a 
half and suggests another thing to make 
it whole — as, spirit, matter; man, woman; 
odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; 
upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. . . . 
The same dualism underlies the nature 
and condition of man.'' 

Plato perceived the same law of polar- 
ity in " the generation of contraries, of 
death out of life, and life out of death, of 
recomposition and decomposition.'' 
[ 33 ] 



BALANCE 



Man faces on all sides the polarities of 
Nature, some of which — such as wet and 
dry, hot and cold, work and rest, pleasure 
and pain — were as apparent in savagery 
as they are in civilization. With increas- 
ing knowledge man perceives more and 
more of these dualities and invents new 
words to express them. Roget gives, in 
his " Thesaurus," more than twelve thou- 
sand words of opposite meaning. " There 
exist comparatively few words of a gen- 
eral character to which no correlative term, 
either of negation or of opposition, can be 
assigned,'' says Roget. 

Hegel held the theory of " progress by 
antagonism " — " that forms which are op- 
posed are really complementary or neces- 
sary to each other, and their conflict is 
limited by the unity which they express 
and which ultimately must subordinate 
them all to itself.'' 

Sometimes we recognize that a stranger 
is a teacher or a minister by the tone of 
[ 34 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

his voice. The peculiarity in the voice is 
partly, but not wholly, oratorical. It is the 
voice of the orator who expects no answer, 
who anticipates that no one will '^talk 
back " on equal terms — the voice undis- 
ciplined by antagonism. We may observe 
also the absence of the discipline of an- 
tagonism in the voices and manners of 
children, and of those who have too much 
or too little self assertion — in the mean 
and the haughty, the servile and the arro- 
gant. The countryman adjusts himself 
with some trouble to the wa3^s of the city, 
and the city man to the ways of the farm 
or forest, because these changes bring new 
antagonisms. We meet new antagonisms 
with every change from infancy to the 
grave — in learning to walk and to care for 
ourselves; in going first to school; with 
each new study; in the cares, duties and 
responsibilities which come with maturity; 
in heat and cold, dust and rain; in conta- 
gions; in the numberless enemies which 
[ 35 ] 



BALANCE 



lurk in the water we drink and in the air 
we breathe; in old age, ^'that malady 
which no physician has ever cured." 

Life is filled with issues — moral, intel- 
lectual, political, social, philosophical, 
commercial, physical — some being grave 
and others trivial. The mind of a man 
is a field of battle in which contending 
ideas, forces and interests meet and clash, 
each one seeking for the weak spots in the 
other. A thought or proposal arouses an- 
tagonistic thoughts and considerations, 
and a school of thought begets antagonis- 
tic schools. Monotheism rises up against 
polytheism, heterodoxy against orthodoxy, 
rationalism against superstition, epicu- 
reanism against stoicism, realism against 
idealism, monism against dualism, will 
against fatalism, tolerance against intoler- 
ance, equality against privilege, radicalism 
against conservatism, trades unions against 
employers, farmers against middlemen, 
middlemen against combinations, combina- 

[ 36 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

tions against competition. Our people are 
in perpetual antagonism concerning na- 
tional, state or local policies. In these con- 
flicts, as in all other conflicts, the stronger 
is victorious. Balance forbids a victory 
of weakness over strength. By strength I 
mean power, whether it be mental or phys- 
ical, honest or base. A man is stronger 
than a horse through intelligence; one 
man rules a thousand or a million men 
through superior will, courage, wisdom or 
devotion, or by taking advantage of their 
ignorance, fanaticism or superstition. In 
our political contests the victory goes with 
the majority, which may be in accordance 
with right, or may be moved by misunder- 
standing or passion. The victory of wrong 
will in time produce its reaction, which 
will be favorable to right. " When bad 
becomes bad enough, then right returns." 
^^ Nothing is settled until it is settled 
right." 

The history of civilization is the history 
[ 37 ] 



BALANCE 



of the settlement of issues in accordance 
with their merits, of numberless victories 
of tolerance over intolerance, of reason 
over ignorance, of right over wrong. Nor 
is it true, as is sometimes assumed, that 
there has been no philosophical progress. 
The old contest between stoic and epicu- 
rean — in which some of the greatest 
minds of antiquity participated for five or 
six centuries — has been definitely settled. 
The verdict is expressed in the meaning 
which the two words have acquired in our 
language. The word stoic is applied to the 
strong, emotionless, self denying, uncon- 
querable; epicurean to the fastidious, lux- 
urious, self indulgent, weak. And modern 
thought recognizes that, while the two 
words represent opposite tendencies in hu- 
man nature — one of which is in the main 
noble and the other in the main ignoble 
— neither has the substance upon which 
to build a philosophy of life. Nor is it 
likely that a philosophy of life can be built 
[ 38 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

upon one of two antagonistic ideas or prin- 
ciples. 

The meaning taken on by our words 
^^cynic^and ^^sophist'^also records the final 
verdict concerning the merits of two an- 
cient schools of philosophy. Antisthenes, 
Diogenes and Menippus, Protagoras, Gor- 
gias and Hippias — all important figures 
in their time — were cynics or sophists, 
but common sense has disposed of their 
errors. Experience indicates that the 
theories which belittle human nature, and 
becloud the issues between right and 
wrong, will ultimately become obnoxious 
— that the very terms in which they are 
expressed will grow into words of ill 
meaning. 

The failure to settle intellectual conflicts 
is not due so much to the misunderstand- 
ing of principles as to the misunderstanding 
of facts. No one doubts that rationalism is 
right and superstition wrong, but men dis- 
agree concerning what is rational and what 
[ 39 ] 



BALANCE 



is superstitious. Wrong is not defended 
as wrongs but on the ground that it is 
right. The struggle of thought is to dis- 
tinguish right from wrong. 

In many issues there is truth on both 
sides, and a settlement is delayed by the 
difficulty in determining the true bal- 
ance. Sometimes the truth on one side is 
perfectly balanced by the truth on the 
other side, and it turns out that there is 
no issue, as in the old conflict between 
inductive and deductive reasoning. We 
now know that each process is sound 
when correctly used, and that both pro- 
cesses are essential in reasoning. There 
are no particulars that do not harmonize 
with a generalization, and there is no gen- 
eralization that does not agree with its 
underlying facts. 

Life is a struggle. Wars end, but the 

war of the race — the antagonism of 

thought, the strife between men, between 

man and the forces external to him, within 

[ 40 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

the soul of the individual — ends not save 
it be with extinction. 

Error gains many a temporary triumph, 
but the final victory is with truth. There 
is substance in truth that in the last bal- 
ance outweighs error. 

Nature's process is by test and trial, by 
unfolding, changing, ripping up, undoing, 
redoing. By contrast and conflict she tries 
sincerity and treachery, honor and dis- 
honor, fitness and unfitness, courage and 
cowardice, truth and error. The conflict 
of ideas — between social and political 
systems, and between creeds and philoso- 
phies — is as rude as the conflict between 
the sea and land. Error dies in the struggle. 

The fact, however, that the state of 
Nature is dualistic in so far as it is a state 
of conflict or alternation, should not be 
accepted as carrying the conclusion that 
Nature is dualistic in a fundamental sense. 

The polarities of Nature would, if con- 
sidered alone, represent Nature as a state 
[ 4« ] 



BALANCE 



of confusion and anarchy. Since, how- 
ever, order reigns in the midst of the con- 
fusion, we must accept the alternations 
and conflicts of Nature as being compen- 
satory, and not as anarchic; as being un- 
der the control of law which, in its last 
analysis, is single — monistic, not dualistic 
— and master of all other forces, even of 
gravitation. Water, impelled by gravita- 
tion, falls to the earth, runs through the 
rivulets, brooks and rivers to the sea. 
But it will ascend again to the clouds, 
again refresh the land, again return to the 
clouds, continuing alternately to yield to 
and then to elude the gravitation of the 
earth. " What we call gravitation and fancy 
ultimate is one fork of a mightier stream 
for which we have yet no name," says 
Emerson. I venture to suggest that the 
" mightier stream '^ is named Balance. 



[ 4- ] 



VI 

Action and Reaction in Human Affairs — From 
Paganism to Christianity, to Asceticism, to the 
Crusades, to Exploration and Commerce — Minor 
Interactions — Reaction from Words and Tones, 
Speeches and Thoughts. 

ERROR and evil are located in defi- 
ciency or excess. Even excess in 
virtue is evil, an excess of humility 
being abjectness; of courage, rashness; of 
prudence, cowardice; of patience, indif- 
ference; of economy, parsimony; of gen- 
erosity, waste; of deference, obsequious- 
ness. And so also an excess of learning is 
pedantry; of ease, indolence; of comfort, 
self indulgence; of zeal, fanaticism. Right 
and justice are found in moderation, in the 
golden mean — in the true balance — be- 
tween overdoing and underdoing, going too 
fast and too slow. 

Philosophical history deals mainly with 
[ 43 ] 



BALANCE 




the record of excess, and the reactions 
from excess, in human affairs. Observe 
how Lecky traces the culmination of the 
brutality and cruelty of Rome to the glad- 
iatorial games, in which the spectacle of 
men fighting to the death in the arena — 
where it is said that more than one hun- 
dred thousand perished — delighted vast 
audiences, including the women of the 
first city in the civilized world. It was a 
monk, Telemachus, who finally rushed 
between the combatants, and " his blood 
was the last that stained the arena." The 
immediate reaction from cruelty is repug- 
nance, aversion, detestation. Disgust for 
pagan savagery opened the way for Chris- 
tianity, the religion of kindness, humility, 
peace and fraternity — the exact opposite 
of the pride, arrogance and ferocity of pagan 
Rome. The Christians praised peace, con- 
demned war, abolished slavery, founded 
the first hospitals, and sought to alleviate 
human sorrow and suffering with zeal 
[ 44 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

which is without parallel. One extreme 
follows another in human affairs, like the 
swing of a pendulum. The reaction from 
excess is excess in an opposite direction. 
Excess in moral reformations takes the 
form often of fanaticism. Christian fanati- 
cism developed in time a monstrous form 
of asceticism, glorified the hermit life, beg- 
gary, humiliation, flagellation, self torture, 
the neglect of cleanliness and the laws of 
self preservation, the breaking of family 
ties, and other forms of senseless sacri- 
fice. Pagan excess led to the sacrifice of 
others for sport; Christian excess to the 
sacrifice of self to gain the favor of superhu- 
man powers. The hero of the pagans was 
Caesar, who had risen to fame on the corpses 
of 1,100,000 men. The hero of the age of 
asceticism was St. Simeon Stylites, who 
bound himself with ropes to putrefy his 
flesh; who, it is said, stood on one leg for 
a year and sat on a pillar for thirty years 
bending in ceaseless prayer. And what 
[ 45 ] 



BALANCE 



should we expect as the reaction from as- 
ceticism? Again the opposite — the age of 
chivalry and the wars of the Crusades. The 
ascetics had condemned war, good clothes 
and the love of women. The knights of 
chivalry rode with love tokens on their 
breasts, in brilliant apparel, to rescue the 
tomb of Christ from the ^Moslem. In the 
wars of the Crusades 2,000,000 Christians 
perished. 

Through the Crusades the peoples of 
Europe became better acquainted with 
one another, and the use of ships was 
greatly increased. Consequently the reac- 
tion from the age of the Crusades was the 
age of commerce, and out of commerce 
grew exploration, the discovery of Amer- 
ica, the mapping of the globe. Aversion to 
the intolerance of the ^Middle Ages pro- 
duced the tolerance of later times. A sim- 
ple mechanical contrivance, the printing 
press, facilitated the liberation of thought. 
The heroes of the later centuries are the 

[ 46 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

discoverers, such as Columbus, Newton 
and Darwin. 

Beneath these great interactions the his- 
torian observes minor interactions, cover- 
ing shorter periods in the affairs of nations 
and communities, as in France when the 
indifference of the old regime to the rights 
of man led to the period of liberty, equal- 
ity and fraternity, and the excesses of the 
Revolution to the horrors of the guillotine. 
Dickens, in ^^A Tale of Two Cities,'' 
says: 

"All the devouring and insatiate monsters im- 
agined since imagination could record itself are fused 
in the one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is 
not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, 
a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which 
will grow to maturity under conditions more certain 
than those that have produced this horror. Crush 
humanity out of shape once more, under similar ham- 
mers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured 
forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and 
oppression over again, and it will surely yield the 
same fruit according to its kind. 

** Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these 
[ 47 ] 



BALANCE 



back again to what they were, thou powerful en- 
chanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the car- 
riages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal 
nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches 
that are not my Father's house but dens of thieves, 
the huts of millions of starving peasants ! " 

The atrocities of the French Revolu- 
tion led to the rise of the empire, and the 
excesses of Napoleon to his destruction. 
Victor Hugo, in " Les Miserables," says 
of Bonaparte at Waterloo : 

" Another series of facts was preparing, in which 
Napoleon had no longer a place : the ill will of events 
had been displayed long previously. It w^as time for 
this vast man to fall ; his excessive weight in human 
destiny disturbed the balance. This individual alone 
was of more account than the universal group : such 
plethoras of human vitality concentrated in a single 
head — the world, mounting to one man's brain — 
would be mortal to civilization if they endured. The 
moment had arrived for the incorruptible supreme 
equity to reflect, and it is probable that the principles 
and elements on which the regular gravitations of 
the moral order as of the material world depend, 
complained. Streaming blood, overcrowded grave- 

[ 48 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

yards, mothers in tears, are formidable pleaders. 
When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden, 
there are mysterious groans from the shadow, which 
the abyss hears. Napoleon had been denounced in 
infinitude, and his fall was decided. Waterloo is not 
a battle, but a transformation of the universe. '' 

Flint, in his ^^ Philosophy of History/' 
says : 

" History always participates in some measure of 
philosophy ; for events are always connected accord- 
ing to some real or ideal principle, either of efficient 
or final causation. . . . The more the mind of the 
historian is awake and active, the more, of course, 
it is impelled to go in search of the connection be- 
tween causes and effects, between occurrences and 
tendencies." 

The best chart of industrial conditions in 
past years in the United States is the chart 
of immigration — the coming of foreigners 
being in proportion to the opportunities 
for labor. The first great wave of immi- 
gration was consequent upon the period of 
prosperity which began in 1845, and which 
was stimulated later b}^ the gold discov- 
[ 49 ] 



BALANCE 



eries of California and the beginning of 
railroad construction. The tide of immi- 
gration declined with the panic of 1857 
and through the civil war; it rose after the 
war, declined with the panic of 1873, ^^^^ 
by leaps and bounds with the prosperity 
which began in 1879, declined with the 
business depression of 1883-86, rose again, 
declined with the panic of 1893, and rose 
to the highest point on record in 1903 as 
the result of the preceding prosperity. 

We recognize the consequences of busi- 
ness prosperity in other and numerous 
forms — in contentment, comfort, satisfac- 
tion with the party in power, improved 
wages, increasing luxury and happiness; 
while the results of declining trade are 
business failures, reduced wages, precari- 
ous employment, discontent with social 
and political conditions, want, despair, 
suicide. 

The influence of the law of action and 
reaction can be traced more clearly in 
[ 50 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

those everyday human affairs which come 
under our individual observation than in 
the greater movements of mankind which 
are often imperfectly recorded. We act, 
and are acted upon. The people we meet 
make an impression on us; the impres- 
sion may be for the moment or it may 
last through life. Bloom, fragrance, grace, 
harmony, beauty, majesty, affect us agree- 
ably; deformity, imbecility, distress, cru- 
elty, affect us unpleasantly. The plea of 
the unfortunate, the thought of our visitor, 
the opinion in the newspaper, the issues 
of the time, impress us in accordance with 
our moods or natures. Certain words, 
tones, sights, awaken echoes within us of 
old happiness or pain. 

There are words and tones which pro- 
duce beautiful reactions — the lullabies of 
the mother, the endearments of the lover, 
the voice of sympathy, the enchantment 
of music, the messages of the poets, the 
trumpet calls to honor and duty. And 
[ 5' ] 



BALANCE 



there are words which produce misun- 
derstandings confusion, aversion, anger — 
the words of whining, complaining, fault- 
finding ; of envy, jealousy, slander ; of 
malice, intolerance, brutality. 

The response to the public speaker is 
reciprocal to his power. If he be dull, the 
hearers are wearied; if he be convincing, 
courageous, forceful, the audience will 
kindle, and he may rouse them to laugh- 
ter or tears, to indignation or fury, to 
generosity or sacrifice. He inay change 
the opinions and convictions of some and 
the course of the lives of others; he may 
even save a city from slaughter or make 
a state. If his thought be really great, it 
may live through many ages, stirring gen- 
eration after generation. The reaction of 
moral effort may be prolonged; it may 
even gain force with time, indicating its 
connection with some stupendous primal 
energy. The echo of a great physical con- 
vulsion dies quickly, but the echo of the 
[ S- ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

words of Confucius and Buddha, of Plato, 
Seneca and Christ, still lives. The voice 
of Socrates before his judges kindles men 
whose ancestors were untamed savages 
when Socrates spoke. Buildings decay, 
monuments fall, rivers run dry, races de- 
cline, but a great thought suffers from no 
impairment or decrepitude 5 it has the gift 
of immortal youth and strength. 



[ 53 ] 



VII 

The Law of Gonsequences — The Good or Evil in 
Things is discovered by Observation of Gonse- 
quences — Morals are determined by the Gon- 
sequences of Human Actions. 

A REACTION is the consequence 
of an action, an effect is the con- 
sequence of a cause, a result is 
the consequence of an antecedent. It is 
evident that the words reaction^ ^ff^^t') 
result and consequence express different 
manifestations of one law, usually called 
the Law of Causation, though it would 
be, I believe, more correctly named the 
Law of Consequences. 

We shall understand more clearly the 
interactions in human affairs when we 
recognize that the meaning of the words 
reaction^ effect and result is included in 
the word consequence. We may doubt the 
importance of reaction in our affairs, but 
[ 54 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

we shall not doubt the importance of con- 
sequences. 

We are compelled to give considera- 
tion to consequences in the most trivial 
affairs. One has consequences in view 
when he strikes a match, sets a pot to 
boil, plants a seed, pulls a weed, sharpens 
a pencil, mends a fence. Shall I take an 
umbrella? I balance the danger of rain 
against the annoyance of the umbrella, and 
decide accordingly. Shall I change my 
coat? take another cup of coffee? walk 
or ride? Each question will be decided 
in accordance with my estimate of the 
balance of results. In considering pos- 
sible advantages or disadvantages, gains 
or losses, we are balancing consequences, 
endeavoring to anticipate and weigh the 
results of our actions. 

Regret is usually a reminder of a neglect 
or misjudgment of consequences, while 
repentance and reformation indicate a wak- 
ing up concerning consequences. Our in- 
[ SS ] 



BALANCE 



terest, curiosity, anxieties, fears, hopes 
and ambitions are concentrated upon con- 
sequences. We seek advice when we are 
doubtful about consequences. Precepts 
and examples elucidate consequences. We 
work and rest, eat and drink, scheme and 
plan, spend and save, for consequences. 
We indulge or sacrifice ourselves for con- 
sequences. Caesar expended a million lives 
for earthly glory; St. Simeon Stylites 
scourged himself for eternal gain. Our 
actions, so far as they are controlled by 
reason, are determined by our judgment 
of consequences. 

'^What? Does the tramp, the drunk- 
ard, the thief, consider consequences?'' 

The tramp roves because he prefers the 
freedom and pleasures of his life to the re- 
sults of other ways. The drunkard drinks 
because the near pleasure outbalances in 
his mind the more remote pain. The thief 
steals because he values the quick and 
easy gain more than he fears detection. 

[ 56 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

Each man judges consequences by his 
own lights^ which are distorted often by 
greed, animalism, ignorance. 

The lesson of consequences which the 
individual often learns slowly and imper- 
fectly, the sound business organizations 
acquire quickly and enforce by discipline. 
The salesmen in a successful store are 
characterized by tidiness, promptness and 
a desire to please; the employees of the 
important railroads are not even permitted 
to answer insult with insult. The indus- 
try that is intelligently managed will avoid 
misrepresentation and deception, knowing 
that a reputation for truth and fairness is 
vital to continuous success. The shrewd- 
est maxims of trade are built upon the 
observation of consequences. 

That mind is the strongest which has 
the clearest judgment of consequences. 
The fools are those who know little about 
consequences. The child must be guarded 
because it is ignorant of consequences. 
[ 57 ] 



BALANCE 



What we know of narcotics^ stimulants, 
antidotes, hygiene, surgery, chemistry, ag- 
riculture, mechanics, commerce, culture, 
we know through the observation of con- 
sequences. The best razor, plough, sani- 
tary system, plan of social betterment, 
is that which produces the best results. 
Knowledge, learning and experience deal 
wholly with cause and consequence. The 
science of astronomy seeks to compre- 
hend the heavenly bodies and their influ- 
ences upon each other. The science of 
chemistry explains the consequences of 
chemical action. The science of political 
economy aims to distinguish and mark the 
good and evil results of different systems 
of land tenure, taxation, trade and finance. 
The science of government would deter- 
mine what political system is best for a 
people. The science of war seeks to know 
what arms, equipments, forces and ma- 
noeuvres will inflict the greatest injury 
upon the enemy with a minimum of ex- 
[ S8 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

penditure. The science of language deals 
with the utility of words, pronunciation and 
forms of expression. And so on through 
the whole of human experience, knowl- 
edge seeks to distinguish that which has 
the best results from that which has infe- 
rior or evil results. 

Our ideas of right and wrong are due 
to the nature of the responses to human 
actions. How do we know that truth is 
better than falsehood? Because we are 
better pleased with ourselves when we 
speak truthfully than when we lie; be- 
cause truth is essential to understanding; 
because we despise lying in others; be- 
cause lying leads to confusion, uncertainty, 
chaos, enmity, and to other evil conse- 
quences. And so also we have formed a 
judgment of loyalty and treachery, cruelty 
and kindness, virtue and vice, by their 
consequences. 

Our laws, customs and commandments 
would not prove to us that truth is better 
[ 59 ] 



BALANCE 



than lying if our own experience did not 
confirm it. The Decalogue is effective 
only so far as Nature corroborates it. 

Our common conceptions of morality 
are the results of the observation of human 
actions and their consequences — of cause 
and effect, of action and reaction. We 
know that certain actions are right and 
others wrong, as we know that bread is 
good and straw bad for food; that light 
clothing is more useful in summer than 
in winter; that cleanliness is better than 
filthiness; that the way to walk is forward, 
not backward; that mirth is pleasanter 
than grief. 

As the value of a machine or imple- 
ment is shown in its working, and the 
value of a tree by its fruit, so the merit or 
demerit of food, drink, medicine, acts and 
thoughts is determined by their results, 
reactions or effects — by their conse- 
quences. 



[ 60 ] 



VIII 

Equivalence is the Test of Truth — Our Standards 
are Instruments of Equivalence — The Balancing 
of Alternatives — Reasoning is an Exploration of 
the Undetermined, a Search for Antecedents and 
Consequences. 

IN mathematics, our one exact science, 
equivalence is the test of truth. Con- 
sider the unalterable nature of the 
truth expressed in the simplest equation: 
one plus one equals two. Nothing can 
change this result. That which is so im- 
pregnable is the principle of equivalence. 
One added to one equals two, and can equal 
nothing else. 

Equivalence is the test of truth also in 
the physical sciences, so far as our knowl- 
edge is exact, as in chemical combinations. 
Our standards — the cent and dollar; 
pint and gallon; ounce, pound and ton; 
inch, foot and mile — are instruments 
[ 6. ] 



BALANCE . 



of equivalence. We measure accurately 
only by equivalents. In the absence of a 
standard, v^e fall back on resemblance, 
analogy, comparison, or some other sub- 
stitute for an equivalent. 

The chief substitute, used alike by the 
humblest and highest minds, is the balanc- 
ing of alternatives — the measuring of one 
thing by its opposite. The rules of logic are 
unknown to the mass of mankind, but no 
one possessed of intelligence is unfamiliar 
with the process of balancing alternatives. 
Even the animals use it when they choose 
between two paths, or two actions, as be- 
tween fight and flight. Men use it in every 
dilemma, great or small, from the choice 
between the simplest actions, to the issue 
of life or death. Is the thing under con- 
sideration good or bad? Shall I vote for 
A or B? Shall I act now or postpone? 
Shall I take a risk? Shall I stop or go on? 
Shall I change my course ? Shall I do this 
or that? In these and other dilemmas, we 
[ 62 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

balance the consequences of one alterna- 
tive against the other, and choose what ap- 
pears to be the better. Facing death in two 
forms, we choose the better way. Balanc- 
ing alternatives, one will jump from a high 
window to the pavement to escape fire. 

The moral dilemmas presented to us are 
not always limited to a clear choice be- 
tween right and wrong. It is wrong to 
steal, but should one starve, or permit those 
dependent on him to starve, rather than 
steal ? It is right to tell the truth, but should 
one tell the truth when it involves the be- 
trayal of his comrades, his country, his fam- 
ily? It is wrong to deceive, but would not 
one be justified in deceiving the enemy 
who would destroy him? It is wrong to 
kill, but may not one kill in self defense? 

The problem of morals presses con- 
stantly upon the human race, presenting 
to each individual in turn new trials, 
difficulties and repugnant choices. Each 
must, to a large degree, choose his own 
[ ^3 ] 



BALANCE 



way^ fight his own battle. These are the 
facts which confuse our ethical counselors. 
It is not possible to act always in exact 
harmony with our moral code. If one is 
so placed that he can save his mother from 
starvation only by stealings he will violate 
the fifth commandment if he permits her 
to starve, and he will violate the eighth 
commandment if he chooses to steal. The 
choice between two evils often comes to 
the individual suddenly and imperatively. 
He must act at once, rendering a deci- 
sion for which there is often no precedent 
known to him. The Decalogue which he 
can recite, the philosophical analysis of the 
evolution of ethics, do not aid him. 

He who is thus tried, and who desires 
to do right, will choose the course which 
is least evil. He will balance the alterna- 
tives, exactly as does the one who jumps 
to the pavement rather than remain in the 
burning building. 

Other alternatives crowd upon us. Na- 
[ 64 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

ture presents to us almost continuously 
the choice between near pleasure and re- 
mote good. Shall I rest now and enjoy 
myself, or shall I work, postponing my en- 
joyment? Shall I give the years of my 
youth to study or to play? Shall I accept 
present privation that I may in time enjoy 
security? Shall I consider my own inter- 
ests wholly, or shall I make a sacrifice for 
others? Shall I stay at home in comfort, 
or shall I risk my life for my country? 
Shall I disown my faith, or shall I accept 
death by torture? Numberless are the 
choices between the near and the remote 
good which men must make. The lower 
men show little appreciation of the remote 
good, save as they are inspired by the 
instinct of self preservation. The higher 
men are distinguished by their high valua- 
tion of the remote good — by provision 
for the future, by attention to health, by 
interest in culture, by sound investments, 
by building business, houses and charac- 
[ ^^5 ] 



BALANCE 



ter substantially, by a high estimate of 
honor and duty. 

Reasoning is an exploration of the unde- 
termined — an elucidation of the unknown 
through the known or the discoverable. 
There is no difficulty in measuring with 
exact standards to measure b}^, and with 
something tangible to measure — for ex- 
ample, in determining the number of cubic 
feet in a room, or the power of an engine. 
Reasoning, which is easy so far as it deals 
with exact equivalents, becomes difficult 
when applied to things the equivalents of 
which are unknown. The mind instinc- 
tively seeks for the unknown equivalents, 
and finds them in antecedents or conse- 
quences. Chemical experimentation is a 
search for consequences; bacteriological 
investigation is a search for antecedents. 
The search in both cases is for equivalents 
by which we may determine the nature and 
meaning of the thing tried, or its relations 
to other things. 

[ 66 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

The syllogism in logic is a form by 
which one may advance from antecedents 
to a consequent. The essence of a syllo- 
gism is this: that a premise includes all of 
its consequences. If a premise be true, its 
consequences will be true; if it be false, 
its consequences will be false. Conclu- 
sions, corollaries, deductions, judgments, 
inferences, discoveries and estimates are 
consequences — each following from an 
antecedent or antecedents. 

The failure to consider, or to estimate 
correctly, the consequences of a position 
is fatal in reasoning. This is illustrated 
in the case of a number of schools of 
thought holding conclusions concerning 
the most important questions of life which 
are in contradiction to human experience 
or to reason — for example, idealism and 
fatalism. 

That form of idealism which denies the 
existence of matter, has been supported 
by many famous minds, in neglect of its 
[ ^7 ] 



BALANCE 



consequences, for we know that no idealist 
could act as if matter had no existence — 
could live and move about in contempt of 
mudj stone walls, mountains, rivers, seas, 
snow, ice, fire, food, poison, gunpowder, 
clothing, beds. 

Fatalism — known under different names, 
as foreordination, predestination, neces- 
sity, determinism — the theory that man 
is an automaton, an instrument moved 
and played upon by external influences 
or powers, has been defended by many 
eminent theologians, philosophers and 
other thinkers, including some distin- 
guished modern scientists. Observe, in 
the face of the intellectual prominence 
of the fatalists, how completely the con- 
sequences of fatalism refute that theory. 
One convinces himself that fatalism is 
true, that he and all other men are au- 
tomatons. He must convince himself 
through reason. But an automaton can- 
not reason. He convinces himself through 
[ 68 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

reason that he is an automaton without 
reason ! 

The method of reasoning justified by ex- 
perience, used by men in contact with the 
problems and difficulties of life, whether 
the problems and difficulties be the most 
simple or the most complex, is the method 
of common sense — the testing of ante- 
cedents by consequents, and of conse- 
quents by antecedents. 

We judge the value of a machine, a 
field, a cow, a pig, by what it will pro- 
duce; a picture, a scene, a play, a spec- 
tacle, a poem, a song, a book, a thought, 
by what it gives back to us; a creed, an 
opinion, a plan, a policy, a system, a phi- 
losophy, a deduction, a conclusion, by 
what we believe its consequences are or 
will be. 

We estimate the value of a nation, a 
race, by its history, its antecedent record. 
The calculations of future events by the 
astronomers are based on antecedent ex- 

[ 69 ] 



BALANCE 



perience. We must judge what will be by 
what has been. We search alike for good 
seeds and evil germs that we may propa- 
gate the one^ and destroy the other. 

To comprehend the unknown seed, we 
plant it and observe its consequences. To 
comprehend an unexplained crime, we 
search for its antecedents. The process 
of reasoning, even of the most abstract 
reasoning, is the same. Our knowledge 
of a thing is limited by our knowledge of 
its antecedents and consequences. An ad- 
vance in knowledge, from the humblest 
step to the highest scientific achievement, 
comes from the investigation of antece- 
dents or consequences. 

As a physical interaction includes cause 
and effect, and perfect equivalence be- 
tween them, so does the mental interaction 
which we call reasoning include antecedent 
and consequence, and perfect equivalence 
between them. We are unable to think of 
antecedents and consequences as being 

[ 70 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

other than exact — of peaches as growing 
on apple trees, or of acorns that produce 
potatoes. The measure of truth and false- 
hood will be found in their equivalents — 
in their antecedents and consequences. 



[ 7t ] 



IX 

Compensation in Human Affairs — Problems of Busi- 
ness are Problems of Compensation — Right is 
accomplished by rendering Equivalents — Duty- 
is a Debt, literally a Due — The Golden Rule is a 
Law of Equivalent Exchange. 

IN primitive times trade was by bar- 
ter — a fish for a rabbit, a shell for a 
cocoanutj or service for service — a 
direct exchange of articles or labor. Mod- 
ern commerce is still correctly designated 
as ^^ trade" or " exchange/' though methods 
are improved. Money, drafts, credit and 
transportation are instrumentalities of ex- 
change, of balance. I exchange my labor 
for money, which is good in exchange for 
whatever may be in the market. A debt 
is a deferred balance. A promissory note 
is an agreement to settle a balance. A 
bank check is a draft upon a balance in 
bank to close or re,diice a balance else- 
[ 72 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

where. Systems of accounting are agencies 
of balance. The correctness of bookkeep- 
ing is tested by a balance. 

Interest is the penalty for a postponed 
payment, for a delayed balance. The busi- 
ness done on a cash basis is balanced 
continuously; the business done on credit 
is out of balance, involving risk. The de- 
lay of compensation is dangerous. Fail- 
ures, bankruptcies and business panics 
are due to debt, the neglect of compensa- 
tion. 

Life consists almost wholly of buying, 
selling, paying. There are no gifts, noth- 
ing that does not call for an equivalent. 
If we cannot pay for gifts in kind, we must 
pay in gratitude or service, or we shall 
rank as moral bankrupts. 

If I would have a good situation, I must 
pay for it not only in labor, but in prompt- 
ness, intelligence, faithfulness and good 
manners. If I would have good service, I 
must pay not only in money, but in con- 
[ 73 ] 



BALANCE 



sideration^ recognition, appreciation, fair- 
ness. I can hold no one to me if I mis- 
use him. 

All things are to be had for the buying. 
Would you have friends? Then pay the 
price. The price of friendship is to be 
worthy of friendship. The price of glory 
is to do something glorious. The price of 
shame is to do something shameful. 

Friendship, glory, honor, admiration, 
courage, infamy, contempt, hatred, are all 
in the market-place for sale at a price. 
We are buying and selling these things 
constantly as we will. Even beauty is for 
sale. Plain women can gain beauty by cul- 
tivating grace, animation, pleasant speech, 
intelligence, helpfulness, courage or good 
will. Beauty is not in the features alone; 
it is in the soul also. 

Good will buys good will, friendliness 
buys friendship, confidence begets confi- 
dence, service rewards service ; and hate 
pays for hate, suspicion for suspicion, 
[ 74 ] 



1 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

treachery for treachery, contempt for 
ingratitude, slovenliness, laziness and 
lying. 

We plant a shrub, a rosebush, an orchard, 
with the expectation that they will pay us 
back. We build roads, mend harness and 
patch the roof with the same expectation. 
We will trust even these unconscious 
things to pay their debts. 

Some of our investments are good, and 
some are bad. The good qualities we 
acquire — moderation, industry, courtesy, 
order, patience, candor — are sound in- 
vestments. Our evil institutions and habits 
are bad investments, involving us in losses. 
We become debtors to them, and they are 
exacting creditors, forcing payment in full 
in money and labor, and sometimes in 
blood, agony, tears, humiliation or shame. 

We recently had in this country the in- 
stitution of chattel slavery, which we had 
cultivated for two hundred years. Prepar- 
atory to going out of business, this insti- 
C 75 ] 



BALANCE 



tution called on us for final settlement. 
Our indebtedness, which proved to be 
large — amounting to more than half a 
million lives and over six thousand mil- 
lion dollars — v^as paid in full. It seems 
strange that our institution of slavery, 
with no standing among the great powers 
of the earth, should have been able to col- 
lect such an indemnity in blood, treasure 
and pain from an enlightened people, tak- 
ing a drop of blood from the dominant 
race " for every drop drawn by the lash." 

We are administering compensation 
continually in our praise and blame of our 
fellow men — in applause to a poet or dis- 
coverer, in condemnation of the greedy and 
rapacious, in aversion to injustice, in love 
to our benefactors. 

" Each day," as Emerson says, " is a day 
of judgment." We are judged continually, 
and usually correctly, by our associates and 
friends. And we are constantly pa3'ing 
penalties to or receiving rewards from 

[ 76 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

our judges — penalties in the indifference, 
dislike, contempt and detestation of our 
fellows; rewards in their appreciation, 
confidence, good will and love. 

The vulgar receive no respect, the heart- 
less no sympathy, the rapacious no affec- 
tion. It is better to be a dog that has earned 
a little love than Caesar in triumph, his 
enemies on his chariot wheels. 

Compensation is in the frost on the win- 
dow pane, and in the sunset of gold and 
crimson and purple, which reward the ar- 
tistic sense in the minds even of the for- 
lorn and poor; in the hope in the hearts 
of men which makes life endurable; in the 
first cry of the infant which rewards the 
mother's agony. 

Right is accomplished by rendering 
equivalents. Duty is a debt, literally a due, 
which we owe to ourselves or to others. 
The Golden Rule is a perfect law of equiv- 
alent exchange, and Kant's " categorical 
imperative " — " Act according to that 
[ 77 ] 



BALANCE 



maxim only which you can wish at the 
same time to become the universal law " 
— is also an exact law of reciprocity. 

" The real first truth of morality," says 
Victor Cousin, " is justice. It is justice, 
therefore, and not duty, that strictly de- 
serves the name of a principle.'' " Univer- 
sal justice," says Aristotle, " includes all 
virtue." '^Justice is the greatest good," 
says Plato. 

Justice is the foundation of retribution, 
vindication, reparation, obligation, reci- 
procity, accountability, duty. Justice is 
compensation. 

Everything in Nature, conscious and un- 
conscious, animate and inanimate, is busily 
engaged in paying its debts. By what sys- 
tem is this perfect accounting made? We 
see no books, observe no management, and 
yet the numberless settlements are made 
with as much exactness as if each one were 
superintended by a group of experts, com- 
bining more of knowledge and justice than 
[ 78 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

are possessed by all of the mathemati- 
cians, scientists, thinkers, philosophers and 
judges in the world. We cannot explain 
this accounting on the theory of chance 
or accident; we must conclude that it is 
the consequence of a supreme power or 
principle of order, right and justice which 
regulates the affairs of the world. 



[ 79 ] 



X 

Order is Regulation; Balance is Regulator. Right 
is Correctness ; Balance is Corrector. Justice is 
Compensation; Balance is Compensator — Balance 
is Single and Supreme, without a Mate or Equal. 

BALANCE is a word in which are 
concentrated, I hold, the higher 
meanings of the words order, right 
and justice. 

The high and more general meanings of 
the word order — such as sequence, regu- 
larity of succession and method, right ar- 
rangement — fit well into the word balance. 
In other words, balance may include the 
higher meanings of order, but order does 
not include all of balance. We shall not 
find the fundamental explanations of the 
system of Nature in order. Effect, it is 
true, follows cause, and reaction follows 
action, in an orderly manner. This is a 
process, a general way of Nature. Such a 
[ 80 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

statement, however, gives out little light. 
But when we say that effect balances 
cause, that reaction balances action, then 
we make a distinct advance toward unity 
and light. 

Right is a word of broad and noble 
meaning, but it also does not fit com- 
pletely into the fundamental explanations 
of the system of Nature, or apply as per- 
fectly as does the word balance to every 
interaction. 

The figure illustrating justice is a god- 
dess blindfolded, holding the scales of bal- 
ance in her hands. Justice is balance in 
human affairs. Balance is wider than jus- 
tice, since it includes justice and more than 
justice. There is no justice in the moon, 
where there is no life, but balance is there. 

Balance includes order, right and jus- 
tice, but none of the latter can include 
completely the former. Balance is an 
active, governing principle, supreme, cen- 
tral, automatic. Order is regulation; bal- 
[ 8i ] 



BALANCE 



ance is regulator. Right is correctness; 
balance is corrector. Justice is compen- 
sation; balance is compensator. 

As we advance in knowledge we per- 
ceive more and more of duality in the 
processes of Nature. Doubtless we shall 
know in time that all processes^ save the 
supreme process, are double. We know 
now that the law of causation is misnamed; 
it is really the law of cause and effect. 
And so also the law of evolution is actually 
the law of evolution and devolution. That 
the fit survive is only a half truth, the 
other half being this — that the unfit die. 
That matter and force are indestructible 
is also a half of the complete truth that 
matter and force are indestructible and 
uncreatable. The law of consequences is 
really the law of antecedents and conse- 
quences, though I shall continue, for the 
sake of brevity, to designate it as single. 

As Roget has shown, nearly all of the 
important words in our language are bal- 

[ 82 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

anced by words of opposite meaning. 
Even honor is balanced by dishonor, vir- 
tue by vice, right by wrong. But where 
shall we find the obverse of balance, its 
other half, mate or contrary, the force 
which matches balance on equal terms? 
I know of no such energy or principle. It 
has no name; no word in our language 
expresses such meaning. We say that re- 
action balances action, attraction balances 
repulsion, order balances disorder, and so 
on, but what balances Balance? These 
words in which I attempt to consider the 
balancing of balance become ridiculous, 
indicating the absurdity of the thought 
that balance is itself subject to balance. 
Balance is single and supreme, without a 
mate or equal. 



[ «3 ] 



XI 

Natural Justice — Compensation in Human Affairs 
involves a Cycle of Beginning, Development and 
Conclusion, as Seed Time, Growth and Harvest — 
Tyranny is an Antidote for Mean Spiritedness, and 
Courage is the Antidote for Tyranny — Through 
such Rude Alternations do we move forward. 

" 1 \ UT what of the failures of balance, 

11 of the awful accidents and terrible 

convulsions of Nature in which 

balance seems to be absent^ or at least 

tardy or inefficient? '' 

The convulsions of Nature are not 
violations of balance ; they are the phe- 
nomena connected with Nature's great 
interactions. Lightning is the shock ac- 
companying the establishing of equipoise 
between two clouds, or between a cloud 
and the earth. An earthquake is the 
equalization of an internal pressure upon 
the crust of the earth. And so cyclones, 
[ 84 ] 



_j 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, epi- 
demics and other disturbances are the 
consequences of the antecedents which 
produced them. 

"You admit, then, that things are not 
always in balance, and that man can defy 
balance ? " 

Man cannot defy balance. His acts must 
produce equivalent consequences. The use 
of rotten harness, imperfect boilers, defect- 
ive flues, bad plumbing, weak buildings 
and faulty machinery will invite disaster. 
Whenever the internal pressure overbal- 
ances the strength of the boiler, we have 
what we call an accident, though it is 
not really an accident, being the result 
of ignorance or of a miscalculation of 
forces. 

We invite evil consequences in overeat- 
ing and overdrinking, in overworking and 
underworking, in neglecting sanitary pre- 
cautions, in worrying and straining beyond 
our strength, thereby receiving many a 

[ 85 ] 



BALANCE 



hard rap and sometimes a deathblow. We 
live in the kingdom of equivalence and 
compensation. Its laws are very strict, 
and we cannot evade them. If we violate 
them, we must pay the penalty. 

To say that compensation is defeated 
because it requires time for completion is 
as unreasonable as if one should say that a 
I journey is endless because its conclusion 
is not reached in an instant, or that the 
seed planted this morning is a failure be- 
cause it does not produce an ear of corn 
this afternoon. We do not comprehend 
the Rocky Mountains through the first 
glimpse of one of its peaks, nor is the 
whole process of evolution to be found in 
one of Darwin's lines. And compensation 
also is revealed only by the whole of it 
— in its completeness — and not in one 
glimpse or line. 

The processes of compensation in human 
affairs involve usually a cycle of begin- 
ning, development and conclusion — as 
[ 86 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

seed time, growth and harvest — for com- 
pletion. A headache, separated from the 
indulgence that preceded it, is apparently 
wrong; connected with its cause, it is 
right. To judge a thing, we must know 
its antecedents and consequences. We 
cannot determine the exact status of a 
wrong, or of what appears to be a wrong, 
unless we know that antecedents do not 
justify it, or that consequences will not 
rectify it. 

At the end of all our reasoning con- 
cerning the fundamental questions of life, 
we must choose between two alternatives 
— either (i) all things are in the process 
of being righted, or (2) the world-order 
is hopelessly wrong. 

The correction of excess and deficiency 
is the province of balance. It would be 
impossible to make a list of the influences 
and forces which antagonize excess or de- 
ficiency, for we do not know, and doubt- 
less never will know, all of them, as they 
[ 87 ] 



BALANCE 



are included in the most subtle and minute 
phenomena of action and reaction^ of cause 
and effect. Human law, for illustration, is 
designed to prevent excess or deficiency 

— not only statute law and common law, 
but laws of decorum, ceremony, courtesy, 
etiquette, custom, usage, manners, trade. 
These laws are more or less defective, 
themselves subject to excess or deficiency 

— as laws of despotism, privilege, mono- 
poly, fashion — and sadly require the regu- 
lation of balance. To one who suffers froin 
defective laws, the force that corrects them 
seems to be far off or even non-existent. 
We should remember, however, that bal- 
ance works sometimes secretly, as in the 
imperceptible rhythm said to exist in all 
motion, and sometimes silently through 
centuries, as in the transformation of sun- 
shine into coal. 

The world has doubtless suffered more 
from tyranny in its many forms than from 
any other perversion of order in human 
[ 88 ] 



4 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

affairs. Yet we may perceive much of 
balance in the origin, development and 
conclusion even of tyranny. The tyrant 
rules because he is the stronger. Strength 
will rule over weakness. No protest or 
complaint, no weeping or wailing, will 
change that fact. Tyranny exists by the 
consent of the oppressed. Those are en- 
slaved who are willing to be owned, who 
are too ignorant or cowardly to resist, or 
who consent to temporize. We enslaved 
the negro because he lacked spirit, but we 
failed to enslave the Indian. The Indian 
accepted death, and declined slavery. 
There were negroes, too, who declined 
slavery, and found freedom in the north 
or in death. 

There is something in tyranny that 
rouses the spirit of men, even of dull and 
cowardly men. It may be that we owe 
more to our tyrants than to our benevo- 
lent autocracies, which have soothed and 
lulled us into indifference and inglorious 
[ 89 ] 



BALANCE 



content. Tyranny is an antidote for mean 
spiritedness, and courage is the antidote 
for tyranny. Through these rude alterna- 
tions do we move forward. We would 
value freedom little if we knew nothing of 
oppression. 

As for the tyrant^ he thinks of poison 
when he eats and drinks; he sees danger 
in the sullen faces of his slaves. He lives 
in dread of assassination^ and often dies 
by it. He sees danger even where there is 
no danger. He cuts a sorr}^ figure in his- 
tory. His life is uneasy and his memory 
is detested. There are no happy tyrants. 
The great tyrants earn immortal infamy; 
the small ones secure the hatred of those 
who know them. The account, as we see it, 
balances rudely ; doubtless it would bal- 
ance to a hair if we could trace all of the 
remote antecedents and consequences of 
tyranny. Doubtless also, if we could trace 
the antecedents and consequences of all 
other evils, we should know that there is 
[ 90 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

no trouble which time will not heal, no 
wrong which is not in the process of being 
righted. 

The universe is under the reign of law, 
which is everywhere — in things mean and 
minute as well as in things noble and great. 
So far as we have come into an under- 
standing of these laws, we have found 
none defective. 

No sound philosophy can concede that 
a law of Nature can be out of balance or 
in any way less than true and perfect. 
When we advance a theory to the point 
where it would prove that a law of Nature 
is out of balance and defective, we should 
know that the conclusion is wrong; that 
it is our reasoning, and not the law, that is 
out of balance and defective. 



[ 91 ] 



XII 

Justice is Incomplete in the Present Existence — Our 
Life here is as a Broken Part of a Broader Life — 
If Death ends All, then the Mass of Mankind must 
live, toil, suffer and die under a Condition of Hope- 
less Injustice. 

WE must admit, however, that jus- 
tice, which is balance in human 
affairs, is incomplete in this life. 
All men are endowed at birth with unequal 
strength, intelligence and moral qualities. 
One, born of superior antecedents, is 
reared under benign influences, develops 
into noble manhood, lives under favorable 
environments to a good old age, and dies 
tranquilly. Another, a woman, born of 
low antecedents, is sold by a degraded 
mother into prostitution, lives a short and 
wretched life, and dies miserably. One, 
inheriting a mean intellect, lives on a 
level a little above the brute ; another, 
[ 9- ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

the idiot, is more helpless than the brute. 
To one pair are born fine children, who 
grow up to helpful maturity; to another 
pair comes a drunkard, a degenerate, an 
imbecile or a criminal. One, who con- 
forms to the opinions or institutions of his 
time, perhaps ignorantly or dishonestly, 
lives peacefully to old age ; another, more 
intelligent or sincere, suffers martyrdom 
for his devotion to right and duty. 

A few live long and pleasant lives, into 
which enters no unusual trouble, pain or 
misfortune. The lives of the many are 
short and broken, or rendered burdensome 
by slavish toil ; " by griefs that gnaw deep, 
by woes that are hard to bear." Story 
pictures these, in his " lo Victis," as — 

..." the low and the humble, the weary and broken 

in heart, 
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent 

and desperate part ; 
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose 

hopes burned in ashes away, 
[ 93 ] 



BALANCE 



From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped 
at, who stood at the dying of day, 

With the work of their Ufe all around them, unpitied, 
unheeded, alone, 

With death swooping dow^n o'er their failure, and all 
but their faith overthrown." 

Nor are the good always happy nor the 
vicious wretched in proportion to their de- 
serts in this life. To the contrary^ the good 
are often wretched and the vicious happy. 
f The life here is as one act in a play or 
one chapter in a novel, in which the plot 
has neither opening nor conclusion, and 
i in which the action, separated from the 
preceding and succeeding parts, is appar- 
ently without purpose, sense or justice — 
in which wrong and villainy may be tri- 
umphant and integrity and virtue trampled 
in the dust. 

Perhaps our passion for fiction and the 

drama is due to the fact that in them we 

find that completeness and justice which 

we rarely see in real life. In them the 

[ 94 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

good, after many difficulties and troubles, 
are triumphant, and the evil are finally un- 
done. 

Our fondness for biography and history 
— which abound also in rewards, retribu- 
tions and other equities — can be explained 
on similar grounds. We discover that com- 
pleteness and justice come to the individ- 
ual slowly, but surely, in a historic sense; 
that those made great by accident are in 
time forgotten; that the tyrannical and the 
cruel are detested; that Columbus left a 
better legacy than Caesar; that Newton is 
more honored than any English king; that 
Burns, the rustic poet, is better loved than 
Bonaparte, the conqueror. And we ob- 
serve that Lincoln — whose youth was for- 
lorn, whose life was full of care, who was 
murdered in the hour of his triumph — 
still lives in the hearts of his countrymen. 

And we learn to believe that the books 
of Nature must balance; that Time glori- 
fies the just, humiliates the arrogant, levels 
[ 9.^ ] 



BALANCE 



all inequalities, revenges all outrages, rights 
all wrong. 

Thus we find in both fact and fiction, 
and in the hunger for justice in our own 
hearts, some warrant for our old faith that 
the present life is only a broken part of a 
much broader life which will be complete, 
and in which all things will be made right 
and even. 

If this life were broken into still shorter 
fragments, it would appear to be still more 
unjust. If, for illustration, each life con- 
sisted of one day only, then the lives of 
some would fall upon fair, mild or bril- 
liant days, and others upon wet, cold or 
hot days; some upon the long days of 
June, and others upon the short days of 
December; and some upon days into which 
no sunlight would enter, and these would 
doubt even the existence of the sun. 

But our life here consists of many days, 
and we know that the good days outnum- 
ber the bad ones; that the seasons return 
[ 96 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

with precision, and that there are but slight 
variations in the annual rainfall and tem- 
perature of any given district. 

A week or even a month of bad days 
does not discourage us, for we know that 
in the round of a year we shall have about 
so much of rain and drought, sunshine and 
fog, heat and cold. So far as the weather 
is concerned. Nature's average restores 
approximate equilibrium in the C3xle of 
a year, and complete balance in a term of 
years. 

The broader the basis of reckoning, the ' 
more perfect is the equivalence established 
by statistics and experience. While we 
have in our present life manifestations of 
balance in the alternations of the weather, 
in the recurrence of the seasons and in 
many other phenomena, and while a tend- 
ency toward justice is evident in all hu- 
man affairs, it is clear that the life here is 
neither long enough nor broad enough to 
establish complete compensation. 
[ 97 ] 



BALANCE 



A full consideration of the subject leads 
to the conclusion that, if death ends all, 
then the mass of mankind must live, toil, 
suffer and die under a condition of hope- 
less injustice — and hence that the only 
basis for the belief that justice will be 
completely established in human affairs is 
in the doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. 

This conclusion sheds much light upon 
the universality, persistence and rational 
meaning of religion. 



[ 98 J 



XIII 

The Essential Meaning of Religion is found in the 
Agreements, and not in the Disagreements, among 
Believers — There are Three Fundamental Reli- 
gious Beliefs : (i) That the Soul is Accountable 
for its Actions ; (2) That the Soul survives the 
Death of the Body; (3) In a Supreme Power that 
rights Things. 

RELIGION is the oldest, the most 
universal and the most permanent 
of the institutions of men. We 
have no historic record of a people who 
were destitute of every form and manifes- 
tation of religion. It is nurtured by civili- 
zation; it existed among the earlier and 
lower men. 

Tylor ranks perhaps as the foremost in- 
vestigator of primitive beliefs. In consid- 
ering the theory that there must be tribes 
so low as to be destitute of religiotis faith, 
he says: . 

[ 99 ] 



BALANCE 



^^ Though the theoretical niche is ready and con- 
venient, the actual statue to fill it is not forthcoming. 
The case is in some degree similar to that of the 
tribes asserted to exist without language or without 
the use of fire ; nothing in the nature of things seems 
to forbid the possibility of such existence, but as a 
matter of fact the tribes are not found. Thus the 
assertion that rude non-religious tribes have been 
known in actual existence, though in theory possible, 
and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on 
that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state 
of things, we are entitled to demand." — Primitive 
Culture, i. 418. 

Concerning the harmonies in religious 
beliefs, T3dor also says: 

*' No religion of mankind lies in utter isolation 
from the rest, and the thoughts and principles of 
modern Christianity are attached to intellectual clues 
which run back through far pre-Christian ages to the 
very origin of human civilization, perhaps even of 
human existence." — Primitive Culture, i. 421. 

Spencer says: 

" Of religion, then, we must always remember that 
amid its many errors and corruptions it has asserted 
and diffused a supreme verity. From the first, the 
[ ^oo ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

recognition of this supreme verity, in however imper- 
fect a manner, has been its vital element; and its 
various defects, once extreme but gradually dimin- 
ishing, have been so many failures to recognize in 
full that which it recognized in part. The truly reli- 
gious element of religion has always been good ; that 
which has proved untenable in doctrine and vicious 
in practice has been its irreligious element ; and from 
this it has ever been undergoing purification.'' — First 
Principles, p. 104. 

Religion is a word which has not been 
clearly defined. It has one meaning to 
Jews, another to Christians, another to 
Mohammedans, another to Buddhists. 
Even the Christians — being divided into 
many sects — hold views more or less in 
conflict concerning the meaning of reli- 
gion. The lexicographers have defined the 
word timidly and haltingly, drawing no 
clear distinction between religion and 
theology. 

What is the actual meaning of the great 
fact which we call religion? Where shall 
we find the " supreme verity " to which 
[ «oi ] 



BALANCE 



Mr. Spencer refers^ and the harmony of 
which Mr. Tylor speaks ? 

It would be useless to attempt to dis- 
cover a ground of agreement in all of 
the thought of the world concerning reli- 
gion^ for the thinking on the subject has 
been voluminous and endless, good and 
bad, sane and insane. Nor should we ex- 
pect to find an essential harmony in all 
religious organizations, great and small, 
temporary and permanent, powerful and 
insignificant. It is conceivable that a sect 
claiming to be religious is really irre- 
ligious. 

We should seek for the essential meaning 
of religion in the broad principle or prin- 
ciples which have been accepted by great 
masses of men in places and times wide 
apart; in the permanent manifestations of 
religious sentiment, and in the instinctive, 
spontaneous and untaught beliefs common 
to primitive men which survive in more 
highly developed form among the enlight- 
[ ^02 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

ened. And we must seek for it finall}^ in 
the harmony of belief in the great religious 
organizations now in existence; for they 
must contain, in the natural order of 
growth, that which is worthy of survival 
in the religious faith that has preceded 
them. We must seek for the meaning of 
religion in the agreements, and not in the 
disagreements, among believers. 

It is now conceded by enlightened the- 
ologians, as well as by philosophers, that 
religious institutions and beliefs have de- 
veloped through the universal principle of 
evolution. And it follows that, as the oak 
is something more complete than the 
acorn, astronomy than astrology, man than 
the ape, so we shall find religious beliefs 
to be more perfectly developed in enlight- 
enment than in savagery. 

" For a principle of development," says 

Edward Caird (Evolution of Religion, 

pp. 43-45), ^^necessarily manifests itself 

most clearly in the most mature form of 

C '03 ] 



BALANCE 



that which develops. ... It is the devel- 
oped organism that explains the germ 
from which it grew. . . . We must find 
the key to the meaning of the first stage 
in the last.'' 

I. The Belief that the Soul is Account'- 
able for its Actions. 

" I entertain a good hope/' says Socrates, 
" that something awaits those who die, and 
that, as was said long since, it will be far 
better for the good than the evil." 

A very old belief — which grows with 
man's growth and strengthens with his 
enlightenment — is the faith that he is ac- 
countable for his actions. 

Tylor, who doubts that the doctrine of 
compensation was universal among primi- 
tive races, admits that it existed among 
many, and that it extended and developed 
with the growth of mankind. He says: 

" A comparison of doctrines held at various stages 
of culture may justify a tentative speculation as to 
[ '04 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

their actual sequence in history, favoring the opinion 
that through an intermediate stage the doctrine of 
simple future existence was actually developed into 
the doctrine of future reward and punishment, a 
transition which, for deep import to human life, has 
scarcely its rival in the history of religion." — Primi- 
tive Culture, ii. 84. 

D'Alviella says: 

'* The idea of a judgment of the dead, to which the 
theory of rewards and punishments naturally leads as 
its culmination, appears to have found its way into 
the minds even of very backward peoples." — Hib- 
bert Lectures, p. 193. 



Tangible evidence of the belief in ac- 
countability by primitive tribes nowextinct 
being lacking, many scientific investigators 
deny that it existed. 

Yet these investigators agree that pro- 
pitiation was an universal rite among the 
lowest men, that it developed with man's 
culture, and survives, even to the present 
time. Why did primitive men propitiate 
the spirits of their dead.^ And why did 
[ '^5 ] 



BALANCE 



the later cults propitiate fetiches, idols and 
gods ? 

Propitiation is offered through fear to 
powers to which one acknowledges ac- 
countability. The culprit propitiates his 
judge, the slave his master, the subject 
his ruler. It is evident that the motive 
strong enough and general enough to im- 
pel the primitive tribes to propitiate the 
spirits of the dead must have been based 
on the belief that man was accountable 
to the spirits, whom he credited with ex- 
traordinary powers. 

It appears to me that the sense of ac- 
countability was in the nature of things 
the first religious sentiment in the mind of 
man; that it is older than the belief in a 
future life and in superhuman powers; that 
it was based and still rests upon cause and 
effect, which are apparent to the dull, as 
well as to the enlightened; that the lower 
men perceived that the fruits of certain 
acts and things were good and of others 
[ io6 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

bad, and that this perception led inevita- 
bly, in the infancy of thought, to the recog^ 
nition of the law of consequences^ which 
is the law of accountabilit}', of rewards 
and penalties. 

The knowledge of primitive man begins 
with cause and effect. He discovers that 
water quenches thirst, game is found under 
certain conditions, a cave gives shelter, 
friction brings fire, the sun yields heat 
and light, some plants are poisonous, frost 
withers, lightning kills. 

The first lesson learned by the infant 
is connected with cause and effect. The 
mother is the source of food, the cause of 
protection. Later the child learns that 
through effort it can walk; that some 
things are hurtful and others helpful; 
some bitter, some sweet; some heavy, 
some light. It discovers that some actions 
are beneficial and may be safely repeated; 
that others are injurious and should be 
avoided. The beneficial it recognizes as 
[ -or ] 



BALANCE 



good, the harmful as evil. That which 
hurts, even if inanimate, the child would 
punish; that which is pleasant it rewards 
at least with a smile. The baby becomes 
a judge, and gives forth verdicts. Before 
it can speak its first word, it knows much 
instinctively of cause and effect, of good 
and evil, recognizes the utility of rewards 
and penalties, and realizes dimly its own 
accountability. 

The brute also, in proportion to its in- 
telligence, understands cause and effect; 
it recognizes its enemies, comprehends its 
own weakness and strength, declines con- 
flict save on terms favorable to itself, and 
knows the distinction in numerous cases 
between things harmful and things bene- 
ficial. The wisest man is distinguished in- 
tellectually from the lower men, and from 
the brutes, by his superior knowledge of 
cause and effect and of the distinctions be- 
tween good and evil. 

Man's belief in his accountability — that 
[ ^08 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

iSj in cause and effect — is fundamental. It 
begins with his first rational consideration 
of his relations to the external world and 
to the order of Nature, which he will later 
deify. Nature has two imperative com- 
mands which primitive man hears con- 
stantly — ^^Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt 
not." As his mind grows, the horizon of 
his accountability extends until it passes 
beyond the confines of this life. Believing 
in his own survival of death, he anticipates 
that in the after-life it will be " far better 
for the good than the evil.'' 

It would be a reasonable assumption 
that the theories of a superhuman power 
or powers, of potent spirits, fetiches, idols, 
of many gods, and finally of one God, grew 
out of man's feeling of accountability. His 
sense of accountability forced him to be- 
lieve that he was responsible to some 
power which sets things right. Man has 
been so impressed usually by his accounta- 
bility for his sins — by " the dread of some- 
[ ^^9 ] 



BALANCE 



thing after death'' — that he has sought 
means of escape from it as he would from 
wild beasts^ from flood or from fire. 

D'Alviella (Hibbert Lectures, p. 179) 
says that religion from the first " de- 
veloped a spirit of subordination'' and 
" favored the sacrifice of a direct and im- 
mediate satisfaction to a greater but more 
distant and indirect good." 

The theory of " a standard of duty pre- 
scribed by something loftier than imme- 
diate advantage/' as Brinton expresses it, 
which was recognized dimly and roughly 
by the lower tribes, has been accepted by 
all later forms of faith. 

We find the doctrine tkat the soul is 
accountable for its actions bedded in 
the foundations of religion, entering com- 
pletely into the life here and into the life 
hereafter. It lies at the base of all religious 
theories of reward and retribution, of a 
day of judgment, of salvation and dam- 
nation, of heaven and hell. 
[ no ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

2. The Belief that the Soul survives the 
Death of the Body. 

Tylor claims (Primitive Culture, i. 424) 
" as a minimum definition of religion, the 
belief in spiritual beings^'^ which ap- 
pears (p, 425) "among all low races with 
whom we have attained to thoroughly in- 
timate relations.'' He defines " the belief 
in spiritual beings " (p. 427) as including 
in its full development " the belief in souls 
and in a future stateP 

This belief, he says (p. 426), is '^ the 
groundwork of the -philoso-phy of reli- 
gion^ from that of savages up to that of 
civilized man;" and constitutes (p. 427) 
"an ancient and world-wide philosophy." 

Grant Allen says : 

"Religion, however, has one element within it still 
older, more fundamental, and more persistent than 
any mere belief in a God or gods — nay, even than 
the custom of supplicating and appeasing ghosts or 
gods by gifts and observances. That element is the 
conception of the life of the dead. On the primitive 

[ •■• ] 



BALANCE 



belief in such a life all religion ultimately bases itself. 
The belief is in fact the earliest thing to appear in 
religion, for there are savage tribes who have nothing 
worth calling gods, but have still a religion or cult 
of their dead relatives." — The Evolution of the Idea 
of God, p. 42. 

Brinton says: 

*^I shall tell you of religions so crude as to have 
no temples or altars, no rites or prayers ; but I can 
tell you of none that does not teach the belief of the 
intercommunion of the spiritual powers and man." 

— Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 50. 

D'Alviella says: 

" The discoveries of the last five-and-twenty years, 
especially in the caves of France and Belgium, have 
established conclusively that as early as the mam- 
moth age man practiced funeral rites, believed in a 
future life, and possessed fetiches and perhaps even 
idols." — Hibbert Lectures, p. 15. 

Huxley says: 

"There are savages without God in any proper 
sense of the word, but there are none without ghosts." 

— Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 163. 

Spencer says that the conception of the 
souPs survival of physical death, 
[ ^^- ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

" along with the multiplying and complicating ideas 
arising from it, we find everywhere — alike in the 
arctic regions and the tropics; in the forests of North 
America and in the deserts of Arabia -, in the val- 
leys of the Himalayas and in African jungles ; on the 
flanks of the Andes and in the Polynesian islands. 
It is exhibited with equal clearness by races so re- 
mote in type from one another that competent judges 
think they must have diverged before the existing 
distribution of land and sea was established — among 
straight haired, curly haired, woolly haired races; 
among white, tawny, copper colored, black. And we 
find it among peoples who have made no advances 
in civilization as well as among the semi-civilized 
and the civihzed." — Sociology, ii. 689. 

Some recognition of the doctrine of a 
future life is found in the religious cults, 
ancient and modern, of which we have ac- 
curate knowledge. Even the ancient He- 
brews, whose faith was more materialistic 
doubtless than any other that is known to 
us, believed in spirits within and without 
men, that Elijah " went up by a whirlwind 
into heaven," that the dead Samuel ap- 
peared to Saul, that '' the Lord killeth and 
[ "3 ] 



BALANCE 



maketh alive: he bringeth down to the 
grave, and bringeth up/' and that all souls 
went at death to a vague and shadowy 
hereafter which could not be called life, 
and yet was not complete annihilation. The 
modern Hebrews repudiate the material- 
ism of early Judaism. For more than six 
hundred years the Jewish church has ac- 
cepted the doctrine of ^^the resurrection 
of the dead " in the creed of Maimonides. 

In the same way the Chinese have re- 
pudiated Confucius. While the thought of 
Confucius is materialistic, the Chinese re- 
ligions are profoundly spiritualistic. Not 
even Confucius, the adored and venerated 
philosopher of the Chinese, nor the writers 
of the Old Testament, could wean their 
followers permanently from the instinctive 
belief in a future life. 

Instinctive religion — that which is 

permanent and untaught as distinguished 

from that which is temporary, isolated, or 

based on speculation or authority — toler- 

[ ^H ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

ates no limitation upon the after-life of 
man. Here and there some teacher or 
prophet has proclaimed that only women, 
or the married, or the great or the good, 
or even that no one, will survive death, 
but such theories have left no permanent 
impression upon the religious convic- 
tions of mankind. The modern religious 
organizations of substance and permanence 
hold that all mankind will survive death. 
We may conclude, in the light of all the 
facts obtainable, that the belief in a future 
life — that the soul survives the death of 
the body — is a fundamental precept of 
religion. 

3. The Belief in a Supreme Power that 
rights Things. 

The belief in superhuman influences and 
powers has been and continues to be uni- 
versal, accepted alike by the lowest savage 
and the highest philosopher; by the deist, 
pantheist and atheist, as well as by the the- 
[ ^^5 ] 



BALANCE 



ist Primitive man had a low or dull con- 
ception of the overruling power. Some- 
times he located it in a pebble or great 
rock; in a hill or mountain; in the dawn, 
sun, moon or stars ; in a mummy or idol; 
in his own ancestor; even in animals, fishes 
or reptiles. In whatever form he recog- 
nized it, however, it was to him a power 
that rights things, a beneficence to which 
he offered sacrifices and implorations. 

The primitive interpretations of the su- 
preme energy improved with man's growth 
in culture. The lower conceptions gave 
way to something better, and these to some- 
thing still better — fetichism to idolatry, 
idolatry to polytheism, polytheism to mon- 
otheism. 

It is sometimes said that Buddhism is 
a godless religion, and this assertion has 
been used as a foundation for the assump- 
tion that a belief in God is not fundamen- 
tal in religion. It may be that Buddhism 
recognizes no supreme being, but it is 
[ ^^6 ] 






THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

not true that Buddhism recognizes no 
power or powers that right things. No 
religion recognizes more completely than 
Buddhism the eternal forces of reward and 
retribution, as is illustrated in Karma, the 
law of just consequences. 

Religion deals fundamentally with the 
order and regulation of humankind, with 
their present, past and future. It has as- 
sumed naturally, indeed necessarily, that 
man is subject to some order or ruler 
possessed of unlimited power. While the 
lower cults have recognized in the fetich 
or idol a force which is helpful of or con- 
siderate to mankind, the more elevated 
races and sects have attributed more sub- 
lime qualities to the supreme force. A 
divine power is recognized in Varuna, 
the chief deity of the early Aryans; in 
Brahma, the absolute of the Hindoos; in 
Jehovah, the almighty of the Hebrews 
and Christians; in Odin, the all-father of 
the Norsemen; in Zeus, the highest deity 
[ ^'7 ] 



BALANCE 



of the Greeks; in Jupiter, the chief God 
of the Romans; in Allah, the one God of 
the Mohammedans. The strongest words 
expressive of beneficence and omnipo- 
tence are applied habitually to God — the 
providence, the divine, the infinite, the 
eternal, the all-powerful, the all-present, 
the all-holy, the immutable, the most high, 
the ruler of heaven and earth, the king 
of kings, the light of the world, the sun of 
righteousness. We may safely claim that 
the belief in a supreme poTver that rights 
things is fundamental in religion. 



[ ''8 ] 




■ 
I 



XIV 

The Fundamental Meaning of Religion is revealed 
by its History — Religion recognizes that Right 
rules the World — Science recognizes that Balance 
rules the World — Religion and Science are in 
Harmony, not in Conflict. 

WE have, then, three fundamental 
religious beliefs : 

I. That the soul is account- 
able for its actions. 

2. That the soul survives the death of 
the body. 

}^. In a supreme power that rights 
things. 

The belief that the soul is accountable 
for its actions^ is the recognition that the 
law of consequences applies to the indi- 
vidual soul, that the good shall fare better 
than the evil, that men shall reap as they 
sow. 

The belief that the soul survives the 
[ ''9 ] 



BALANCE 



death of the body^ is the recognition that 
accountability does not end with the death 
of the body; that the wrongs which are not 
righted here must be righted elsewhere; 
that the good which is not rewarded here 
must be rewarded hereafter; that there can 
be no break in the processes of account- 
ability. As science assumes that cause and 
effect, action and reaction, motion and 
transformation, are ceaseless in the phys- 
ical world, so religion assumes that cause 
and effect, actions and consequences, are 
ceaseless in the soul of the individual. 
The religious doctrine of ceaseless moral 
accountability is identical with the scien- 
tific doctrine of ceaseless cause and effect. 
The belief in a supreme -power that 
rights things^ is the necessary corollary of 
the two preceding beliefs. The doctrines 
that the actions of the individual will be 
balanced by their consequences, and that 
this process does not cease with death, 
include the recognition of a supreme 
[ ^20 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

power of Tightness — a ^ower that rights 
things. 

Combined, read from one into the other, 
what is the message conveyed by these 
three fundamental religious beliefs? Are 
they in harmony or in conflict? is the 
message discordant, or feeble, or subtle, 
or unworthy of the great fact which we 
call religion? or is it harmonious, simple 
and clear, a noble interpretation of divine 
truth? This is the tnessage of the three 
religious beliefs: That man is account- 
able for his actions y that he is subject 
ceaselessly to the law of just conse- 
quences^ to a supreme power of rightness. 
The message is so clear and simple that 
it may even be more briefly expressed 
as the declaration that right rules the 
world. 

This interpretation of the meaning of 
religion is not the interpretation of one 
sect or church, of one time or place; it is 
the interpretation of all sects and churches 

[ ,2, ] 



BALANCE 



that can be classed as religious, and of all 
times and places in which religion has 
been manifest. It is not the product of 
speculation or inspiration; it is the product 
of all human experience bearing upon the 
subject of religion. The meaning of re- 
ligion, the message of religion, is found in 
its own history. Religion contains within 
itself its own story, as the rocks contain 
within themselves their own story. The 
message of religion is not vague, difficult 
or unworthy; it is plain, easy to compre- 
hend; it is lofty and good. Mankind's 
recognition of religion as something holy, 
sacred and divine is fully justified by the 
interpretation of religion revealed by the 
history of religion — that right rules the 
Tvorld. 

We have observed the harmony in the 
scientific interpretations of the system of 
Nature — that each interpretation points 
unerringly to a higher and single interpre- 
tation. And we now observe the same 

[ 122 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

harmony in the fundamental conceptions 
of religion, which point with equal certi- 
tude to a conclusion in unity with the su- 
preme interpretation reached by science. 

Religion, dealing with the essential obli- 
gations and relations of man, rests with 
the recognition of eternal justice — that 
right rules the world. Science, dealing 
with all truth, with the explanation and 
reconciliation of all phenomena, advances 
to a still broader position — that balance 
rules the world — a position so broad that 
it includes the fundamental grounds of re- 
ligion. 

Religion and science are in harmony, 
not in conflict. They have never been in 
real conflict. The appearance of conflict 
has been due to the misunderstandins: and 
misinterpretation of both religion and sci- 
ence through the ages in which men have 
been groping and toiling upward from 
darkness to light. 

[ '^3 ] 



XV 

Religion has been misinterpreted and perverted — 
Science also has been misinterpreted and per- 
verted — Religion answers for its Perversions as 
Science, Truth and Right answer for their Per- 
versions — The Value of a Truth is measured by 
the Magnitude of its Perversions. 

SCIENCE is the search for truth; it 
measures all things by truth, has no 
other standard than truth. As truth 
never conflicts with truth, the demonstra- 
tions of science are necessarily harmoni- 
ous, the same original demonstration often 
being reached by strangers wide apart. 
Science consists of a stupendous unity 
linking the smallest and most obscure 
truths with higher truths, and these with 
still higher truths, on to their connection 
with fundamental truth. The achieve- 
ments of science are due to the methods 
of science — to experimentation, investi- 
[ 124 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

gation, critical examination — to the pa- 
tient weighing of facts by the standard of 
truth. 

Religious thought has evolved necessa- 
rily on other lines. The problems of re- 
ligion — the war between good and evil, 
the mystery of life and death, the nature 
of superhuman powers, of the government 
of the world, of the future state, of man's 
accountability — have appealed with con- 
tinuous force to the interest and imagina- 
tion of men. The yearning to know was 
gratified in the beginning by savage dream- 
ers and mystics, who assumed to be, or 
believed themselves to be, inspired to utter 
divine truth. Religion has been inter- 
preted by sorcerers and by sages, by im- 
postors and by truth-seekers, by dull and 
by exalted minds. Some of the interpreta- 
tions are childish or base ; others supply to 
us our highest conceptions of honor, duty 
and responsibility. Great systems of faith 
grew up, each claiming to be built upon 
[ '^5 ] 



BALANCE 



sacred and infallible authority. The re- 
ligious spirit is reverential and steadfast; 
men have yielded slowly the faith of their 
fathers. The Hebrews accept one author- 
ity^ the Buddhists another, the Christians 
another, the Mohammedans another, and 
other authorities are accepted by other 
believers. Men have measured religious 
truth by authority, not authority by truth. 
Each of the great systems of faith assumes 
the perfect truth of its own authority, and 
denies the truth of all authority except its 
own, thereby admitting the existence of 
false authorities, false prophets and the 
worship of false gods. 

Admitting many contradictions and im- 
perfections in the interpretation of religion, 
shall we conclude that there is no truth in 
religion? Grant numberless errors and 
impostures, must we say that all religion 
is error and imposture ? Let us be as fair 
to religion as to science. Have no errors 
or impostures been advanced in the name 
[ 1^6 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

of science? Consider only that branch of 
science which deals with healing. Have 
there been no false doctors in the world? 
no errors in determining the cause and 
cure of disease? no medical zealots, in- 
flamed with a fanatical regard for their 
own methods, and with enmity for other 
methods? no conflicting schools of medi- 
cal thought? Because of the errors, im- 
postures and strife known to exist among 
those engaged in the art of healing, do 
people of intelligence conclude that the 
science of medicine consists wholly of er- 
ror, delusion and imposture? that it has 
discovered no antidotes, no laws of health, 
no causes of disease ? that sanitation and 
surgery have no merit? 

The record of the science of healing 
contains superstitions as dull and rites as 
base as the lowest religious cults; indeed, 
the false medicine man and the false pro- 
phet have often been one and the same. 
Men have sought the healer of the body 
[ ^^7 ] 



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because of their fear of the consequences 
of physical disease; they have sought the 
healer of the soul because of their dread 
of the consequences of moral disease. The 
healers^ physical and spiritual^ have dealt 
sometimes in nostrums^ exorcisms, con- 
jurations and sorceries; and again in bet- 
ter remedies which, on the one hand, have 
alleviated pain, cured disease and saved 
life, and, on the other hand, have strength- 
ened men in right-doing, purified them, 
given them noble ideals of life and duty, 
and comforted them in trouble, sorrow, 
bereavement, agony, and in the face of 
death. 

Let us not underweigh the fact that 
men have believed in their souls, in life 
after death, in responsibility that does not 
end, in an unbroken chain of cause and 
effect, in eternal justice — that they have 
spanned the abyss of death with a bridge 
of faith leading to a land where the ine- 
qualities, misunderstandings and wrongs of 
[ ^^8 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

this life may be righted. Intuition, instinct, 
or some other form of insight, sometimes 
anticipates science. The supreme law of 
compensation, which the early mystics 
recognized through that happy insight by 
which men grasp truth which they cannot 
yet demonstrate, science recognizes also 
after thousands of years of investigation 
and experimentation. 

Let us not be impatient. Civilization 
was not made in a day. Our sciences have 
been built slowly; they are not yet com- 
pleted, and we must assume that they never 
will be completed, unless it be possible 
that a time will come when truth will be 
exhausted. The search for truth has been 
slow and difficult, and many are the errors 
into which men have fallen. " The laws of 
Plato,'' says Lecky, " of the twelve tables, 
of the consuls, of the emperors, and of all 
nations and legislators — Persian, Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, 
Spanish, English — decreed capital penal- 
[ 129 ] 



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ties against sorcerers.'' When Montaigne 
denounced the belief in witchcraft as a de- 
lusion, its existence was accepted by the 
foremost magistrates, physicians and scien- 
tific men of France. Bacon regarded the 
Copernican theory as a strange fancy. 
Kepler, who discovered the laws of plane- 
tary motion, believed that a spirit guided 
the movements of each planet. The chem- 
ists of the eighteenth century up to the 
time of Lavoisier believed in the theory 
of " phlogiston,'' a curious error. Priest- 
ley, the discoverer of oxygen, died a firm 
believer in phlogiston. Guyton de Mor- 
veau, Macquer and others taught that 
phlogiston was something that weighed 
less than nothing! Political science has 
not yet discovered a way of governing an 
American city honestly and efficiently, nor 
has economic science reformed the in- 
equitable distribution of wealth. The phi- 
losophers of the world, from the beginning 
of philosophy to the present day, have 
[ 130 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

reached no agreement concerning the 
motives of human actions or the meaning 
of morals. 

Science has achieved much, but it is not 
at the end^or near the end, of achievement. 
It has struggled up from small beginnings; 
scientific men, wise men in their day, have 
accepted error. Science is not responsible 
for their errors; science has nothing to do 
with error but to reject it. And so reli- 
gious men have accepted error, and reli- 
gion is not responsible for their mistakes. 
It seems sometimes as if men must try all 
wrong ways, in every line of advancement, 
before they can find the right way. 

The interpretations of religion have dealt 
with the questions: How does right rule 
the world? How will justice be done to 
the individual soul? It is not strange that 
there have been numerous and conflicting 
answers to these questions; and that many 
of these answers are crude and ignorant, 
and some even monstrous and forbidding. 
[ '3' ] 



BALANCE 



The primitive mystics^ recognizing dimly 
the law of consequences, clothed it in sym- 
bols adapted to their own comprehension 
and to the comprehension of their kind — 
in fetiches and idols, in strange gods, in 
numberless forms of penance and propitia- 
tion, in curious judgments, rewards and 
penalties, in heavens and hells which were 
circumscribed only by the limits of their 
imaginations. This may be said to their 
credit: they recognized rewards and pen- 
alties, recompense and retribution, heaven 
and hell. Their lowest conceptions of a 
future state included some recognition of 
moral responsibility and of the supremacy 
of justice. I do not despise their efforts. 
They expressed man's greatest hope — that 
right rules the world — in terms which 
they could understand. They could do no 
more. If that hope — I would prefer to say 
that truth — had waited for its complete 
and perfect exposition, it would doubtless 
be unexpressed to this day. 
[ ^32 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

The earlier symbols gave way to better 
symbols, and these to still better; in time, 
doubtless, all religious symbols will give 
way to the truth which they symbolize. En- 
lightenment grows; superstition dwindles. 
Thought grows clearer. Many creeds have 
been revised. The doctrines of a hell of 
literal fire, and of eternal torment, have 
been abandoned by enlightened people. 
This advance must continue until the 
churches of civilization shall abandon the 
last form, rite, ceremony and doctrine which 
stand in conflict with the fundamental reli- 
gious principle that right rules the world. 
They must in time accept the book of Na- 
ture as the book of God, and recognize that 
the truth-finders are God's prophets — that 
truth, wherever and whenever discovered, 
is the infallible revelation of God — that 
religious truth can be demonstrated only 
by reason, and that God's justice must be 
proved by the processes of Nature if it 
is to be proved at all — that God's jus- 
[ 133 ] 



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tice^ omnipotence and omnipresence can 
be proved more perfectly by the fact 
that cause and effect are equivalent, com- 
pensatory, ceaseless, all-powerful and all- 
present, than by any sacred book — that 
science, in its fundamental interpretation 
of the system of Nature, in its sublime 
conception of the permanence, uniformity 
and rectitude of the world-order, must be 
accepted as the defender, and not as the 
antagonist, of religion. There is no con- 
flict in the revelations of Nature. In all 
times and places, Nature's laws have been 
the same, and truth the same. Never has 
Nature altered or truth changed. 

Religion has been misinterpreted ; it 
has also been perverted. While there are 
no cults known to us which do not recog- 
nise the law of consequences, there are 
many which teach that it can be evaded 
— that the favor of God can be gained 
by means other than by right-doing. 
And, in the name of religion, learning 
[ '34 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

has been persecuted, freedom suppressed, 
great and cruel wars have been waged, 
and monstrous crimes committed — in- 
cluding torture and many forms of mur- 
der, from the slaughter of children on the 
sacrificial altar to the butchery of sects 
and communities. How shall religion 
answer for these evasions, iniquities and 
atrocities ? 

Wrong seeks to disguise itself under 
the cloak of right; tyrants claim to be 
good, not bad; privilege, slavery, the sup- 
pression of thought, are represented by 
their beneficiaries to be right, not wrong 
— to be good even for the unprivileged, 
the enslaved and the shackled. Error dis- 
guises itself as truth. The liar does not 
say, " I am telling you a lie; '' he says, " I 
am telling you the truth." The misinter- 
preters of history, biography, philosophy 
and science do not label their misinter- 
pretations as errors; they proclaim them 
as truths. 

[ ^35 ] 



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Religion must answer for its perver- 
sions as right answers for the perversions 
of right, as truth answers for the perver- 
sions of truth, as science answers for the 
perversions of science. Right answers 
that its perversions are wrong, not right; 
truth answers that its perversions are er- 
rors, not truth; science answers that its 
perversions are unscientific, not scientific; 
religion answers that its perversions are 
irreligious, not religious. 

Only good and truth can be perverted. 
The value and quality of a good or truth 
— the usefulness of the art of healing, the 
nobility of toleration and justice, the value 
of science — are measured with accuracy 
by the wide extent of its perversions. And 
so also the usefulness, nobility and value 
of religion are indicated by the magnitude 
of its perversions. I believe that the per- 
versions of religion — unequaled as they 
are in magnitude by any other record of 
perversion — point unerringly to the con- 
[ ^36 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

elusion that religion rests fundamentally 
upon a great and noble truth. 

Religion is single, not plural. There is 
only one religion. The creeds written, the 
acts done, in the name of religion are re- 
ligious in so far as they conform to the 
fundamental religious principle that right 
rules the world; they are irreligious in so 
far as they are in conflict with that prin- 
ciple. 



[ '37 ] 



XVI 

Measuring the Value of Religion by its Denial — 
Only One School of Thought denies Religion — 
Materialism is the Doctrine that Wrong rules the 
World — Science and Religion meet on Grounds 
of Life, not Death ; of Persistence, not Annihila- 
tion ; of Right, not Wrong ; on the Ground that the 
Laws of Nature are Uniform, not Contradictory. 

WE can measure the strength or 
weakness of religion by the 
strength or weakness of its op- 
posite, its denial. If religion be strong, its 
denial will be weak; if religion be weak, 
its denial will be strong. 

The denial that right rules the world is 
the affirmation that wrong rules the world. 
The assumption that wrong rules the world 
has no foundation in the demonstrations of 
science — which point unerringly to the 
return of equivalence and compensation in 
the processes of Nature — and has had 
[ '38 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

slight recognition in human thought. It is 
true that men have held beliefs which lead 
logically to the conclusion that wrong 
rules the world, but there have been few 
who could accept that conclusion. No 
school of thought proclaims it, and it rarely 
secures lodgment in the human mind save 
as the consequence of pessimism or mis- 
fortune. We must conclude that the denial 
of religion which takes form in the asser- 
tion that wrong rules the world is weak, 
not strong. 

The existence of a supreme power — 
whether it be accepted as personal or as 
impersonal, as knowable or as unknowable 
— is universally recognized. It is usually 
assumed to be a power of rightness. It 
could not be called a power of wrongness 
without accepting the weak conclusion 
that wrong rules the world. 

The assumption that man is, or should 
be, accountable for his actions, is recog- 
nized in our civil and criminal laws, which 
[ ^39 ] 



BALANCE 



enforce penalties upon wrong-doing, and 
compel men to keep their contracts and 
pay their debts ; in our moral code, and in 
our judgments concerning right and wrong. 
The alternative, that men should not reap 
as they sow, should not enjoy what they 
earn, should not suffer for their evil acts, 
is recognized nowhere. A few believe 
that wrong does rule the world, but no 
one can believe that wrong should rule 
the world. 

Only one fundamental religious belief 
— the belief in a future life — is denied 
with force or persistence. Many men, in- 
cluding some of the great intellects of the 
world, from Confucius to Herbert Spencer, 
have doubted or denied that the soul sur- 
vives the death of the body. 

It is a curious fact that the doctrine of 
the annihilation of the soul has not yet ac- 
quired a definite name, though its adher- 
ents include a number of learned men, 
capable in the expression of thought and 
[ HO ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

in the coining of words. '^Materialism" 
is the word used^ in the absence of a better, 
to name this doctrine, but the dictionaries 
do not justify that use. Haeckel, recog- 
nizing its namelessnessj has recently in- 
vented the word " thanatism '' — in English, 
^Meathism" — a fit name for the belief in 
the extinction of the soul. I shall, how- 
ever, use the word " materialism," which 
is better known. 

What rational foundation exists for the 
belief in annihilation? Has science dis- 
covered annihilation? No; science has 
not discovered annihilation; it has not 
discovered annihilation even in the physi- 
cal body of man. At the change which, 
through old custom, we call death, the 
physical body of the individual is trans- 
formed under ordinary conditions into 
numberless other living bodies, the one 
life into swarms of life. Even if the physi- 
cal body be consumed by fire, not one 
atom is annihilated, and life springs from 
[ HI ] 



BALANCE 



the ashes. Science is acquainted with mo- 
tion only, not rest ; with life, not death. 
Science recognizes the indestructibility 
of matter and force, that nothing in the 
physical world is annihilated. It comes to 
this — that the materialist, accepting the 
immortality of matter and force, must 
affirm that nothing dies but the soul. 

There are other and more serious incon- 
sistencies in the theory of annihilation. 
The ceaselessness of action and reaction, 
of cause and effect, is a fundamental postu- 
late of science. " To every action there 
is an equal and opposite reaction,'' says 
Newton. If death ends all, then the indi- 
vidual reaches in extinction a point where 
moral effect fails to follow moral cause, 
and the materialist must deny the cease- 
lessness of cause and effect. 

One dies in the commission of a crime, 
when his heart is full of greed or lust or 
hate; if death ends all, he suffers no con- 
sequences of his sin; he goes to the same 
[ H2 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

silence which awaits the martyr who dies 
for man. If suicide be a sin^ then the sui- 
cide commits an act, if death ends all, for 
which there is no penalty. The doctrine 
of extinction includes the assumption that 
there will be no reckoning hereafter for 
the tyrants, oppressors and scourgers of 
the weak, for the brutes who trample on 
women and children, for ingrates and 
murderers, for those who have tortured 
their kind — that man sows what he will 
not reap, and reaps what he has not sown. 
Religion affirms, on the other hand, that 
death does not break the chain of cause 
and effect; that men shall reap as they 
sow; that there shall come a day of reck- 
oning for the tyrant and the torturer; that 
the suicide shall not escape the conse- 
quences of self destruction; that no man 
shall escape the penalty of his sin, or be 
denied the reward of his virtue; that, for 
those who live justly, there is no trouble 
which will not end, no night of sorrow or 
[ HI ] 



BALANCE 



anguish which will not be succeeded by 
the dawn of peace and joy. 

Religion declares that moral accounta- 
bility is ceaseless; materialism declares 
that moral accountability ends in death. 
Religion is the recognition that right rules 
the world; materialism is the recognition 
that wrong rules the world. Religion de- 
clares that the wrongs which are not 
righted here will be righted hereafter; 
materialism declares that the wrongs which 
are not righted here ^ifjill be righted no^ 
nvhere. 

Materialism is a sweeping denial of 
good and right. In denying the ceaseless- 
ness of action and reaction^ it denies the 
uniformity of Nature; in denying the per- 
sistence of the soul, it proclaims the doc- 
trine of annihilation, which is unknown 
to science; in den34ng the continuance 
of human accountability, it denies the 
foundation of morals. Materialism is the 
doctrine of eternal wrong, of hopeless in- 
[ H4 ] 



THE FUNDAMENTAL VERITY 

justice. Comprehending the nature and 
meaning of the theory of annihilation, 
we shall understand why it is nameless; 
why our language has failed to produce 
a word to fit its exact meaning; why its 
most famous living defender, Haeckel, 
has been unable to coin for it a better 
name than the somber and forbidding word 
" deathism.'' 

We shall search in vain for any good 
or substantial fruits of materialism — for 
hospitals, charities or institutions of learn- 
ing founded in its name or honor; for 
monuments which recognize it; for any 
part that it has played in the advancement 
of civilization; for uplifting songs, hymns, 
poems or speeches inspired by it; for a 
noble thought or sentiment that is depend- 
ent upon it; for sublime or heroic deeds 
in its defense. The doctrine of material- 
ism, built upon an imperfect understand- 
ing of its relations and consequences, is a 
cold, dr}', unstimulating faith which has 



BALANCE 



never reached the human heart save with 
the icy touch of hopelessness and despair. 

The scientific interpretations of Nature 
have advanced constantly in breadth — 
into the uniform, the boundless, the uni- 
versal, the eternal, the ceaseless, the death- 
less. Upon these broad grounds, religion 
and science meet — on grounds of life, 
not death; of persistence, not annihilation; 
of right, not wrong — on the ground of 
the uniformity of Nature : that the conse- 
quences of human action are as definite as 
the consequences of chemical action; that 
the laws of equivalence and compensation 
which operate in the realm of physics act 
with the same unfailing certainty, and with 
the same eternal ceaselessness, upon the 
soul of man. 



[ '46 ] 



Electrotyped and printed by H .0. Houghton &' Co. 
Cambridge y Mass., U. S. A, 




ETERNALISM 

A THEORY OF 
INFINITE JUSTICE 

By ORLANDO J. SMITH 

?N this volume the author discusses the 
fundamental principles of Religion, and 
seeks an answer to such questions as 
these : " If God or Nature has created 
a criminal, can we acquit the Creator 
of all accountability for the criminal ? Has not the 
soul which is created vicious been deeply wronged? 
How can men be held to equal moral accountability 
if they have not been endowed in the beginning with 
equal goodness, equal strength, equal intelligence? 
Are those who are born vicious really the victims of 
the malice of Nature or of the wrath of God ? " 

He reaches the conclusion that creation and anni- 
hilation are unknown to science, and that the only 
theory of Infinite Justice will be found in the assump- 
tion that the individual soul is eternal, — pre-existent 
and deathless — that each man builds his own charac- 
ter. " If his soul be mean, it is the hovel which he 
has made for himself ; if it be noble, it is a palace of 
his own building." 



A number of theologians and other thinkers^ who dis- 
sent from the conclusions of the author ifi particulars 
or in general^ have made these comments upon " Eter- 
nalism /'' — 

Dr, William Henry Scott ^ Ohio State University : 
" A strong and earnest book. . . . Candid, thoughtful 
and suggestive. . . . The earnest desire for truth and 
the noble and fervent passion for justice which per- 
vade it will prove to be a mental tonic of uncommon 
wholesomeness and virtue." 

Dr. Alvah Hovey^ Newton Theological Institution: 
" In spirit and style this work is bold, positive, con- 
troversial, and attractive." 

Alfred Russel Wallace : " A bold effort to solve 
the great problem of the universe. . . . The author 
of this book treats the subject from a somewhat dif- 
ferent standpoint from most of his predecessors, and 
may thus claim a certain amount of originality. He 
possesses also a terse and forcible style." 

Professor N. S. Shaler : " This view [of the eternal 
nature of the individual soul] is maintained in this 
remarkable book with a rare skill in presentation. 
Within the limits of the writing the task could hardly 
have been more effectively or more logically accom- 
plished. . . . 

'' The value of ' Eternalism ' is not to be measured 
by the soundness of its contentions. It is rather to 
be taken as the sign of a return to the primitive 
method of explaining the universe by the individual 
consciousness. Men have gone far with natural 
science and philosophy with the hope that they might 
find an answer to the grave question as to their place 



in the realm. Here is a man who has read much and 
widely, who, for all his learning, trusts to his instincts 
for guidance ; for while the book has evidently been a 
matter of most elaborate preparation, having been sub- 
mitted to several hundred critics before publication, 
and the answers of some four hundred considered in 
the revision, it remains singularly original and indi- 
vidual.'' 

Moncure D, Conway : " When he [the author] looks 
into his consciousness and writes, when he transmutes 
his experience into thought, he is clear, powerful, and 
convincing. . . . The author by vigorous reasoning 
brings religion into the sphere of nature and life 
where it may be studied in freedom and harmonized 
with consciousness and thought." 

Dr, Henry Goodwin Smithy Lane Theological Semi- 
nary : "*Eternalism' is written by an independent 
and a sincere thinker. . . . The author shows no lack 
of ingenuity in dealing with special difficulties." 

Dr, Francis Brown, U?iion Theological Seminary: 
" The sentences are crisp, the chapters are short. . . . 
It is not hard to read, and its main purpose is clear. 
. . . His [the author's] standard is unswerving, his 
ideal lofty." 

JDr, Paul Carus : "An unusual and noteworthy 
attempt at solving the most difficult and basic prob- 
lem of life." 

Crown 8vo. $1.25, net, (Postage t3 cents.) 

Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



APR 30 1904 



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